


Beyond The Gilded Cage

by commoncomitatus



Category: The Letter for the King (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Duty, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23512849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Pre-1x05.  After the summit, Alianor returns to Dagonaut.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because nothing says loyalty like following your faves to their new show, getting hit with a sledgehammer of Feelings (TM), and immediately writing 30k of fic about it. I am shameless and predictable, and slowly becoming okay with that.
> 
> Apologies, as per usual, for my left-of-centre character preferences, and my left-of-centre self in general. >.>

—

Sometimes, Alianor thinks she had more power when she had none at all.

More freedom, certainly. To think, to do, to want, to be.

More reach, more opportunity. To explore, to experience, to see and feel and know.

More _choice_.

How to speak, how to dress, how to spend her time. The whole world lay spread out before her — not just Dagonaut, but everything, everywhere, horizon to horizon, from sea to sky and beyond — and she could do with it as she wanted. When she had nothing, she felt as if she had everything.

Now, it really is hers — Dagonaut, not the rest of the world; the horizons remain where they are, the skies and seas untouchable, but beautiful Dagonaut is hers — and every day she finds that she has less and less. Her power is a symbol, an illusion at best and a sham at worse, and her reach extends only as far as the end of her hand. Her choices are few, when she has any choice at all.

She makes speeches that do nothing. Hollow, empty words that might have held some meaning three or four generations ago but carry so little now that she might as well be talking to the wall. Her subjects, loyal and loving, could repeat them by rote if they wished. Indeed, half of them could probably make them sound better too, and with half the effort that she puts in as a matter of course.

She stands in front of the mirror every morning, every evening, every day and every night. Still and stoic, she stands in silence, waiting while patient seamstresses stitch her into dresses chosen by someone else. She practices her smiles and her frowns and her sighs, tightens and loosens her breathing in rhythm with the laces on her corset, and imagines that this is leadership.

Her father, when he was king, never spent so much of his time on such pointlessness and frivolity. Preening in front of her reflection, practising her smile, her frown, her sigh, tuning her voice like an instrument while others tune her body: the fine-boned corset digging into her ribs, the subtle styling of her hair, coiffed to perfection in one moment, artfully tousled in the next.

Her appearance speaks so much louder than her voice, she thinks sometimes, and yet she so rarely gets a say in what it says.

Before, she could say what she liked, so long as no-one of authority was around to chasten her for it. Before, when she was young and free-spirited and cared for nothing at all. Before her body became her voice, before her voice became drowned in fabrics and colours and other people’s words. Before she inherited one kind of power and lost every other.

Before, she could do anything, be anything. Now she holds a nation in her hand, and she can do nothing at all.

She used to hunt in the woods, when she was younger. Dressed for the dirt and earth, looking more like a knight than a princess in a loose-fitting shirt and tight-fitting trousers, her hair pulled back to keep it out of the way, not a thought for whether it was coiffed or tousled or anything else. A bow slung across her back, a sword on one hip and a knife on the other; no doubt she looked a dreadful mess, but who cared out there in the middle of nowhere?

She was good at it, too. A unique talent, her father told her more than once, and she was — _is_ — more proud of that than all the hollow praises she’s received since ascending to the throne.

“As pretty as your father was wise,” King Favian said at the summit, and was she supposed to be flattered?

This, it seems, is all she can hope for now, the only talent she has that is worthy of any note at all: her beauty, her appearance. The arch of her spine holds more power now, it seems, than the heart and mind it carries. And she is furious with herself because she should have seen it coming years ago.

Stupid to imagine that she might be worth more. Stupid to expect, even for a moment...

She is to be married. This, she has known for longer even than she’s held the crown. But the nature of the thing grates and grinds, a whetstone along her nerves, sharpening them to the point of an arrowhead, the double-edged gleam of a knife or a sword or any one of a dozen other sharp and shiny things that she’s no longer allowed to touch. Impotent frustration boils in her blood, and she knows that it has to stay there.

For the sake of her kingdom, and her people, she must — _will_ — find peace with this.

She is to be married. Not to the charming, bumbling Iridian, whose company she does not detest, but to his brother, whom she knows only by his reputation: ambitious, bloodthirsty, set on fire with victory.

He has every reason to be. His father is right about that, at least. A thousand years of blood and war, ended with the sweep of his sword. He has every right to expect a reward after that; this, she already knew.

But that is Unauwen’s business, not Dagonaut’s.

Not _hers_.

The victory is theirs, the glory, the triumph, the place in the annals of history. Eviellan too, if there’s enough left of it. Surely that would be enough for anyone.

The burden rests with King Favian to reward his son’s deeds. It should not fall on Queen Alianor. Dagonaut is not a trinket to be handed over lightly. Her _hand_...

Well. Her hand has never truly been her own; this she knows perfectly well. But it rankles, more than it probably should, to see it used in such a way.

Her hand belongs to her people now: the people of Dagonaut. Any choice she makes — any choice made for her — affects them as well.

Crown Prince Iridian is charming. Approximately a tenth as charming as he believes himself to be, true, but charming nonetheless. He is affable and pleasant, not completely displeasing to the eye, and his company is acceptable. Rather more in some ways than others, but she would have to be a far greater fool than she is to have expected more than ‘acceptable’ there.

Prince Viridian, his brother, is...

Well. He could be any one of those things, or all of them, or none of them. He could outshine his brother in conversation, outrank him at the negotiating table, even outperform him in the bedchamber. Or he could fall short in every place except the one he has already proven himself master of: the battlefield. Alianor has no way of knowing any of this until the thing is done, but she is no fool and she suspects the answer is no less obvious than it appears.

It takes a particular kind of soldier to end a war spanning four generations. It takes a particular kind of—

No. She will not say ‘man’.

A particular kind of _tyrant_.

Viridian’s ruthlessness is well-documented and known throughout the kingdoms. His thirst for power she has heard only through whispers and murmurs, rumours from the servants who have no place learning such things. Which, from her experience, makes them all the more credible.

The point is, he’s dangerous.

Iridian, already heir to his own kingdom, has no need for another. And if he did... well, she at least would hold as much of Unauwen as he held of Dagonaut. They are equals, more or less, or at least they will be when the old man dies. Any designs Iridian may have on her kingdom — and if she has the measure of him right, they would be few, if any at all — would, at the very least, have to pass first through the gates of his own.

Viridian, the younger, is not her equal, nor will he ever be, whatever his triumphs in battle. He has nothing to trade for the crown of Dagonaut, save his glory and the blood of his victims. He lacks his brother’s resources, and he lacks his brother’s complacency.

He has been away for a long time, as she understands it, much of his mind and body eroded by the tides of war; he returns now, heady with triumph, no doubt transformed by what he has seen and done. It doesn't take one skilled in warfare to understand this, nor does it take a political mastermind to know that it would be understandable if he believed himself deserving of more than a feast and a place in the history books. The throne of Unauwen would surely be his by right, if only it wasn’t already spoken for.

But alas, so it is, as far out of reach for Viridian as Eviellan was for four generations of would-be conquerers. 

And so, with no throne to bequeath to his most deserving son, King Favian — cunning, admittedly, even in his dotage — has taken it upon himself to acquire another.

That is fair. For Unauwen, at least, it is proper.

Alianor’s fear, however, is that it will not be enough.

Her fear—

No.

Her _concern_ is that the bloodthirsty conquerer — that is, her future husband — will want more of Dagonaut than she is willing to give.

She has no qualms about sacrificing herself to the chess board, throwing herself upon the wheel and letting it spin. She has no qualms, either, about casting aside what few illusions of freedom still remain to her. In the interest of peace and prosperity — of ‘good politics’, as Favian so eloquently put it — she will sacrifice as much of herself as the world demands.

But she will not sacrifice her people as well. She will not sacrifice her kingdom. Even for that.

If the dissolute old— if _King Favian_ believes the choice is his to make, his disappointment will weigh heavily on them all.

He doesn’t seem to understand that until he has the good manners to die, she is _his_ equal.

Her life may be forfeit. Her marriage, her bedchamber, her right to freedom and choice and desire and any one of a thousand other things the common folk take for granted: all this and more she will gladly sacrifice if it mean assuring peace, ending conflict, and — though she will admit this to no-one but herself — not leading Dagonaut to the same bloody fate as Eviellan.

But the choices she makes — the too few choices that are still hers to make — are not for herself alone. Her father, as wise as she is pretty, impressed this on her with great importance.

Favian knows it just as well, of course. That’s why he neglected to mention it.

And now they are to meet, she and Viridian, and she has no say in that either.

She will leave tomorrow, as early as possible, and ride to his camp where she will find him cleaning from his clothes and boots the Eviellan blood he spilled in the name of glory. They will meet there, amid the bones and ashes of his historic conquest, and they will loathe each other at first sight, and all will be as it should be.

As it should have been from the beginning.

*

Before this, she returns home to Dagonaut.

She slinks away at sundown, without the formalities of a farewell. King Favian has already taken his leave, as crude and raucous as he does everything else, staggering back to his kingdom and crowing triumph. There are preparations to make, so he claimed, if his son’s return is to be met with the pomp and grandeur it deserves.

Thus, he left, taking half the summit away with him, and Alianor has no desire to drag out some protracted, uncomfortable goodbye with Iridian for the sake of politeness. He surely knows her well enough by now to know that she sets no stock by such things... and he will no doubt be grateful for his own spared blushes.

It really is a shame, she thinks privately. He would have made a fine consort, if given the chance: he would have asked for nothing, and she would have delighted in giving it.

Viridian won’t be her consort, of course. Not if his father has any say in the matter. “King of Dagonaut,” he bleated, thick with drink, as if the matter were already decided.

As if Dagonaut’s queen would allow such a thing.

As if she could stop him, if he decided to take it.

Viridian is not his brother, complacent and cocksure and already assured of his throne. Viridian, bloodied and bloodthirsty, has already razed one nation to the ground; what’s to stop him doing the same to another, in a fit of passion or temper or whim?

It is dangerous. It is—

It is, like so many things, entirely out of her hands.

It will do no good to dwell upon it, so she doesn’t.

Instead, she rides homes.

She rides through the night, not stopping for sleep or food, accompanied by just two of Ristridin’s grey riders. It’s the smallest escort she can reasonably get away with; even she is not reckless enough to travel such a distance alone. Wandering the woods is one thing — she knows them like the back of her hand, and perhaps better even than that — but a journey of this length requires at least some modicum of sensibility. With so much death in the air, threats and dangers lurking around every corner, it serves to be protected. Even she, as free-spirited as she is, must concede this, just as she must surely concede that her title makes it doubly necessary.

She would not have it so, were the choice hers. But alas, like so many others, it is not.

The grey riders are a concession, one she makes with rather less reluctance than she’d admit. Ristridin has trained them all well, each of them as loyal and patient as he is, and, generally speaking, just as respectful. They won’t trouble her with needless coddling, won’t try to direct her route or choose the safest path. They will ride alongside her in silence, as he would have, were he here to do so.

She hopes, when she returns, to find that him there too. She hopes—

No, she will admit it: she _worries_.

It is unlike him to be gone for so long without at least sending word. It is unlike him to take so long at all to get a job done, and especially one as simple as this: to track down a runway youth and bring him back, protect him if need be from Fantumar and his low-life thugs. It bodes ill that he has not yet returned with the boy, and worse still that he hasn’t sent word to explain the delay. A scribbled note, a stammering messenger, anything at all.

She is worried, yes. And she is troubled.

And, if she is being completely, unabashedly honest, she misses him.

So few of her knights are truly her own. Most are are remnants from her father’s rule, bound to him or else waiting for old age to free them from their service. Some are mistrustful of her youth, some of her sex, and some of both. Some, like Fantumar, have their own agendas and make no pretence of that, using the title as a bargaining chip, knowing perfectly well that there’s nothing she can do to stop them. There is not one man or woman among them that she knighted herself.

The trials, had they bore fruit, would have taken much of that off her shoulders, and theirs: fresh young knights, all her own, to replace the old, the tired, and the untrustworthy. Everyone would have been happy, and she would have slept more securely at night. But alas, that was also not to be, and she finds herself so often surrounded by the hidden faces of men and women she couldn’t name even if they were laid bare in front of her. It’s not the way it should be, and it’s certainly not the way she wants it to be. But for now, at least, it can’t be changed.

Ristridin is a notable exception. Stalwart and dedicated, respectful to a fault, and absolutely loyal. He serves the crown, as they all do, but he serves Alianor particularly: he has known her since long before she ever wore the wretched thing, and he taught her everything she knows. She would trust him and his grey riders with her life.

If the future is as dark as she suspects, she may yet have to.

For now, blessedly, she does not.

It’s a fine night for riding. The sky is clear and cloudless, the moon almost full, and with keen eyes she can see as far as the terrain allows. Impossible to be caught unawares; the riders’ escort is, as per usual, entirely unnecessary.

Still, by her own admission, she feels safer with them there.

If nothing else, it means that she can ride without thought. It means that she can _ride_ , and lose herself completely to what that means: speed and motion and power. She can keep her eyes only on the horizon in front of her, never minding the ones in other directions, knowing that her back and her flanks are well protected. She can take in the beauty of the night without fear of its dangers, the moon and starlight cutting like a blade through the open grassland. She can silence her mind for a time and simply _be_ , her heartbeat thundering in time with her horse’s hooves, the two of them breathing together as one, rider and mount.

She so rarely gets to indulge this.

Is it any wonder that she seeks out this kind of freedom whenever she can? That she runs from those tedious engagements at the first opportunity, riding off into the forest or the middle of nowhere just for a chance to catch her breath? Is it any wonder that she’d yearn for moments like this, when her whole life has devolved into a thousand tedious moments like that?

The night air is cold and biting. It slashes through her cloak, raising bumps on her skin, swirling around her head and washing away the aftertaste of the summit, of King Favian’s liquor-doused breath, sour and thick as poison.

She cannot outride the inevitability, of course, or the memory. But she can at least put some distance between herself and what transpired there, Favian looming over her, powerful and aged and male, his breath like a toxin, his words like a blade, shining and true and too sharp. For all his weaknesses — and there are a great many of them — his political wit still remains.

He is right, at least in part, and she hates him for that. She hates that he is allowed to speak to her in such a way, his features twisted with the familiar disdain of the old for the young, the male for the female, Unauwen for Dagonaut. She is thrice weakened in his eyes, thrice unworthy of respect, unworthy of dignity, unworthy of equal conversation. He expects her to bow.

It sickens her that she will, that she must. It sickens her that he is right, because his behaviour assuredly was not.

But none of that can touch her here. Here, in the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere, riding home simply because she desires it, because she _chooses_ , she leaves King Favian and both of his wretched sons in the dust. The resentment, the anger, the futility of it; she knows what she is, she has been made ready her whole life. There is nothing to be gained from sulking or grumbling about it, and everything to be gained from pretending it doesn’t touch her.

When she rides to Viridian’s camp tomorrow, she will be the perfect picture of indifference, just as Favian wants: as pretty as her father was wise. And never let it be said that an ounce of wisdom went into shaping that illusion.

But tonight, with all of that still in the distance, she will ride. Power within her body, centred in her thighs; power beneath it, the lean muscle of her horse as he tears up the ground, responding to her will as much as to her command, the two of them living and breathing and moving as one. He has been with her, this beautiful, strong-hearted creature, longer than anyone or anything else, with the exception of Ristridin and a few of her most devoted servants. He knows her better than any, and she knows him just as well.

She is not allowed to know anyone else, and she is certainly not allowed to let herself be know. It is dangerous, risky, irresponsible. To show sentiment or compassion, to imply that she might feel for one courtier what she does not feel for another, to favour one knight over another... there are consequences to every thought that passes from mind to tongue; she has learned to ensure that nothing does.

There is comfort, real, honest comfort, in the company of a horse. In gaining — no, _earning_ — his trust and his respect and, in time, his obedience. It is a challenge far greater than any summit or meeting, a dance far more delicate than any chess game, to earn those things and keep them. A horse can’t be bought or charmed or bargained with; a horse can’t be offered someone else’s kingdom in reward for its deeds. A horse just _is_ , and he decides for himself who is worthy of his time and who is not.

To earn the love of the people of Dagonaut, Alianor needed only to repeat her father’s words, the words of his father before him, and his and his and his, words echoed through so many generations that their origins are all but lost. To earn the love of a horse, she must _work_. She must labour, dutifully and diligently, daily, with her whole body. Words mean nothing to a horse; she can only win him over with action and deed, with only an open heart and an open hand to prove that she is worthy.

She has worked. Daily, dutifully, diligently, she has worked. And it shows.

So much that when they stop to take water one of her riders remarks on it.

“He’s fast,” he observes, pulling off his helmet. “Well-trained too.” He stoops, cupping water in his hands to splash his face, and it is only when he straightens again that he coughs and quickly adds, “Uh, your Majesty.”

She lets it slide without comment. With a smile, even.

Better to be called by her title belatedly, she decides, than suffer another moment of Favian and Iridian calling her ‘madam’ or ‘my lady’. As if she were no more than a common courtier, pretty and unbloodied, with no title of her own, with none of the status and power they both know are hers by right. From charming, senseless Iridian, it’s likely just a tactless blunder; from his father, however, it’s a keen-edged point. From both of them together, consistent and unending throughout the wretched summit, it is enough to make her wring her hands or wring their necks.

In any case, Ristridin and his grey riders have earned the right to call her whatever they please, regardless of protocol or propriety or politeness. They never would, of course — they are too well-trained themselves to even consider such a thing, and too loyal — but they could, and she would say nothing of it. Their lives are bound to hers, forfeit if the situation calls for it, and she knows that any one of them would throw their bodies onto a blade without hesitation, for her or for Dagonaut. The least she can do for such sacrifice is turn a blind eye to a little slip of etiquette.

Her father might call it weakness. Certainly would, come to think of it. ‘Sentiment’, that dreadful word; he loathed it, she recalls, beyond all others.

But he is not here to call her choices weakness or sentiment or anything else. And even if he were, he couldn’t begin to fathom the struggles she faces, struggles that he, in all his long reign and long life, never once had to consider.

No doubt he’d give her a good clip if she dared to say such a thing to his face. But, again, he’s not here, and so his opinion, with all his so-called wisdom, carries no weight any more.

Sometimes she thinks that’s a shame. Other times it is a relief beyond measure.

Either way, the loss is still fresh enough to cause pain. It comes unbidden, sharper than she expects, and it takes her a long moment to swallow it back down. She must, of course — so much of her identity depends on being untouchable and unshakeable — but it is still harder than she expects to shove the faded grief back down to the hidden part of herself, the shadowy, secret place where all deep emotions must go.

A moment, no more. As always, that is all she can allow herself. Then, straightening her spine as subtly as she can, she summons her best smile and turns back to her rider.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” she says, of the horse. “He trained me as much as I trained him. I should sorely hope he’s learned to trust me by now.”

All true, though perhaps not something she should admit to one whose name she doesn’t know.

The horse was hers long before Dagonaut was, long before she ever imagined it really would be. Before the throne, the crown, the speeches and the smiles and the sighs, before she stood before her father’s lifeless body and learned that there was little time for a newly-crowned queen to mourn. 

The horse was hers, long before any of that. Wild and free-spirited, boundless and beautiful, _hers_. She learned to ride on his back, learned to hunt with him in the woods bordering Dagonaut and Unauwen, learned to master her body by mastering his. A young woman can learn a lot from a horse, things that are off-limits to a young queen.

It is definitely true that she is equally well-trained. Sometimes she thinks she’s the only one of them who is: she, with her heavy crown and her powerless claims to power. She, bound to Dagonaut, to its people, to the whims of Unauwen. She, who has no freedom to do or think or feel, and he, wild and happy and free as the wind that drives him forward.

Perhaps that’s the way it should be. Too much rests on her shoulders; she cannot afford to shrug them loose the way he does.

Still, when she rides like this, she feels a small part of it. Borrows it, perhaps, from the bursting colours that flash past them at speed, even in the depth of the night. Catches it, certainly, in the taut pull of muscle beneath her, his back arched, his powerful hooves churning up the earth and grass like it is nothing at all. He has more power in his body, she thinks, than she will ever know in a lifetime as queen; unified in flight, she lets herself imagine she understands how it feels to hold true power.

She says none of this aloud, of course. Foolishness, and that cursed word again: _sentiment_. But perhaps there is something a little sentimental in her rider as well, because his smile is soft and fond as he turns away to tend his own mount.

“It speaks to a person’s character,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “how well his horse thinks of him.”

Flattery, perhaps, but she doubts he means it as such. She has heard such things herself, from Ristridin, who dotes on his own horse as if it were a human child. It makes her happier than she expects, to hear his words repeated by one of his men. Not sentimentality this time — at least, not enough of it to ignite a blush — but a reassurance that they share his values and his pride in the things that matter, that perhaps they share a little of his heart as well. In this, at least, his blood runs in their veins too.

Only time will tell if they share his loyalty and devotion For now, it is enough just to hear his words again, to feel his presence even when he’s so far away. Sentimental or not, she finds herself comforted.

“I hope it speaks well of me, sire,” she says, and this time she keeps her smile hidden, shadowed by her hood.

No doubt he’ll think her coy, ducking her head in such a manner, and she is perfectly content to let him think that. Too often people search her expression for guidance or direction, imagining that they might please her more by saying what they think she wants to hear rather than risk speaking their minds. She likes that he has thus far refrained from such behaviour, that he so easily forgets himself and his place; she is eager to encourage it, even, out here in the middle of nowhere, in a rare moment where a slip of the tongue carries no weight at all.

She doesn’t often get the opportunity to indulge in such things, from others or herself. Honesty, simplicity, the unguarded nature of a comment uttered without a thought for the consequences. Her every word, every look, every breath is so often on display, any mark of faltering a beacon for those who would pounce on her weaknesses and twist them to their strength. King Favian may be among them; Prince Viridian most assuredly will be. When they meet, she will have to be especially on her guard, but not here. Not yet.

It is another of her particular talents, being able to gauge the responses of others without looking directly at them. Even with her head still bowed, her features shrouded by the cloth and the night, she can still see every twitch on his face. He is watching her more closely than he should, his eyes glinting expectantly in the dark.

“Indeed so, your Majesty,” he says at last, perhaps realising that she will not prompt him further, nor fish for some shallow, insincere compliment. “Ristridin has always spoken of you with great respect. Even before you became his...” He coughs, catching himself; there is no misstep in what he surely wanted to say, but she lets him correct himself even so. “That is, before your wise father’s passing.”

This time, she lets him see her smile.

“I’ve always held Ristridin to be a fine judge of character,” she says, with warm sincerity. “Nearly as much as...”

And she inclines her head once more, gesturing to her horse.

It has the desired effect: his shoulders loosen, and he laughs.

Such a rare thing, laughter in her presence.

Sincere laughter, even. She can barely recall the last time she heard such a thing.

She’s certain it’s thoroughly improper, that she allows herself a chuckle in return.

And she is equally certain that she doesn’t care.

*

It is nearing dawn when Dagonaut appears on the horizon.

It seems to glimmer in the hazy half-light, perhaps even to glow, a blessed, beautiful beacon that whispers _home_ and _haven_ and _hearth_.

Alianor is still learning to balance those things. A home for herself, a haven for her subjects, a hearth for her visitors.

It was a hearth for Iridian, during his recent visit. Perhaps it will offer one for his brother, too, when the time comes, though she has her doubts. From what she knows of Prince Viridian, he is not the kind to sit with his feet up while there are corners of the world yet unconquered. There will be no home for him in Dagonaut, and certainly no haven. Like his father, he wants nothing more than another triumph, another victory, another conquest.

Dagonaut, certainly. Herself too, quite probably.

She cannot afford to think too deeply about that.

This, for once, for her own sake. Far too often she finds she must censor her thoughts and feelings for the sake of others — for politics, for politeness, for protection — and now that she is doing so for her own sanity she finds she doesn’t really know what to make of it. She will do what her duty demands, of course, with an eye permanently turned towards what is right for her people, but the forceful swallowing of her emotion is for herself now, self-preservation that is hers alone, not theirs.

There is folly in feeling too much. Stupidity in daring to imagine, daring to _want_...

No more of that.

She is Dagonaut’s queen; there is no room for her to be a woman too. Her body, like her smile or her clothes, like every other part of her, was never hers to keep.

If she is to be a pawn, a reward for someone else’s glory, a sacrifice to the chess board of politics, let her be one completely. An object, nothing more: the head on which Viridian’s new crown will rest while he is away. Let her feel no more about it than the power she has to change it: which is to say, none at all.

Let her heart be still, as it should have been from the start, and beat only for her people, her nation, her home. She is Dagonaut’s servant, may she never forget that.

She takes a moment now, to remind herself. To take in the sight of her beloved, blessed home, its silhouette a shimmer against the slowly lightening sky. Dagonaut, in all its beauty and radiance and life, its strong walls and strong people with their strong, ever-beating hearts. She would give her life to those walls, sacrifice her own heart to keep her people’s beating. Without hesitation, without thought. As surely as she knows Ristridin and his riders — those who ride beside her now, and those whose duties take them elsewhere — would do the same for her, so would she for the people who shout and call her name in the streets.

A strange thing, to be loved so facelessly.

Indeed, a strange thing to be loved at all.

The love of her people, her subjects. It is the only form of love she should ever strive for, the only love she should seek or want or hope for. It should be—

No. It _is_.

It is enough. It will satisfy and it will fulfil, and it will give her joy beyond imagining to die as her father did, knowing that his people will mourn rather than celebrate his passing.

It will drive her to accomplishments a lesser person could not even imagine, accomplishments made not in her own name — not as Viridian conquers Eviellan, not as he would conquer the rest of the world for his own glory and greatness — but in theirs. Each and every one of them. Her name is Dagonaut’s, and everything she does she does for all of them. Their love—

Their love is hers too. And hers is for them and them alone.

She pulls her horse to a halt, steadying herself with a hand on his neck as he whinnies and paws at the ground. He is restless, his keen nose scenting the familiar air; Dagonaut is his home too, after all, and he is as hungry as she is to see it again.

“Soon,” she promises, gently soothing. “But a moment first.”

He is not happy about it, but he yields nonetheless, stilling and growing quiet as he always does when she asks him to. If not for the quivering muscles in his back and neck, she might almost believe him calm, but she knows him too well: he is impatient, no doubt tired and very hungry — as, she is sure, are her companions — and more than anything else in the world he wants to launch into a gallop and return home.

He is not the only one.

“Do you suppose,” she says to her escort as they pull up beside her, “Prince Viridian would believe me if I claimed some critical matter of state preventing our meeting?”

It is the first expression of doubt she has allowed herself. Certainly, it’s the first she’s voiced aloud. Shrouded carefully in humour and homesickness, she lets it carry no more weight than a passing joke: it’s not that she doesn’t _want_ to meet her future husband — of course not; who could imagine such a thing? — simply that she doesn’t want to be taken from her home again so soon. And who would, even if they were thrilled to become Viridian’s trophy? Dagonaut is a jewel among the kingdoms, the greatest of them all, and she has already been away too long on business not of her own making.

Her riders look at each other, exchanging a less-than-subtle glance behind their helmets. Wordless gossip, carefully hidden in the gleaming of their eyes or the twitching of their mouths. It is the safest kind of gossip, the kind without words, and so she turns back to the horizon and pretends she doesn’t see it.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t guess, Majesty,” one of them pipes up after a weighted beat.

Alianor thins her lips. Just a touch, just a little. “Alas,” she sighs, “neither can I.”

The other — her companion from earlier, who has already proven himself more bold and open in her presence than his friend — cocks his head to one side.

“If it pleases your Majesty,” he says, tone light and jovial, “I’m sure we could dig up some catastrophe or another to keep you here...”

She tries, with only moderate success, to smile. “Far be it from me to wish disaster on my people.”

Well, perhaps a little, in this most unique of circumstances. Some petty dispute between the nobles and peasants, maybe, or else trouble with some minor lord or old knight whose only talents lie in deception and deceit. Surely the world would be more peaceful without the likes of Fantumar...

No. Certainly not. A queen must not allow such ignoble thoughts, even in the privacy of her own mind.

Fantumar is a knight of Dagonaut, so named by its former king, and as his successor Alianor must respect that. All personal preferences be damned, as King Favian so eloquently put it. Until he wrongs her personally — no, until he wrongs _Dagonaut_ , her home and its people — she will wish no harm on Fantumar or anyone else. And certainly not for her own gain.

She is not, after all, Prince Viridian.

Not yet, anyway.

Meagre though it was, her smile now fades completely, eclipsed by a sigh.

“No,” she says, entirely to herself. “No, that won’t do at all.”

Behind his helmet, her rider frowns. “Something troubling you, Majesty?”

He hides it well, the flicker of concern, but not well enough. Alianor has spent her whole life learning to read people, to find the hearts kept hidden behind the masks of politics, of armour, of necessity, and the light in his eye shines as bright as the sun, beginning its slow ascent over the horizon. It ignites his face, and inflames hers in a shameful, self-hating blush.

“No.” Too sharp, too clumsy. Her tone borders on impolite, as if he deserves a reprimand for having the decency to show compassion. It is unfair, wholly unjust; she knows this, but it still takes more effort than she’d like to admit to school her voice and her expression into a more appropriate softness. “Your concern is appreciated, sire. But I assure you, I’m quite well.”

He nods, and in the blink of an eye the flicker is gone. She expects the casualness to vanish along with it, the ease of conversation that has characterised this journey; she expects it all to be set aside as their destination draws near, for him to become her rider again, she his sovereign. These boundaries must be reestablished, of course, before they pass the gates and risk being seen by others.

It is inevitable. Indeed, it is necessary. And yet, still she finds herself reluctant.

As does he, so it would seem, because there is a gleam of a different kind in his eye when he says, “Perhaps, then, we should finish our journey before the sun comes up? It would be pleasant to be home in time for breakfast, don’t you think?”

This time, he does not follow with ‘Majesty’.

A final shared moment, apparently, before they return to the world of order and structure, politeness and politics and the necessary distance between a queen and her retinue.

Alianor meets his eyes through the slit in his helmet, and thinks of Ristridin with warmth and love.

“Indeed so,” she says, blessing his rider with a last lingering smile. “Never let it be said your queen would keep you from enjoying a well-earned meal.”

Well earned indeed: they have ridden hard through the night, left the sun setting behind them and arrived as it crests the horizon in front. Such a long journey, and for what?

A whim. Nothing more. A silly, senseless, selfish whim.

Her last, quite probably, before she meets her soon-to-be husband and finds herself conquered. She does not begrudge herself the desire to see her home again while it is still hers in name as well as in her heart. She does not begrudge herself the need to put some distance between herself and Unauwen — its king, its princes, all of it — and to pretend, if only for a night, a morning, a flash of sunlight, that she is free to make such choices at all.

A final moment of senselessness, silliness, and selfishness. A final moment to let herself imagine she is free, before she sacrifices herself to the chess board, to the violence and brutality of politics, and to a man ruthless enough to end a thousand-years war with a sweep of his sword.

It was a lot to ask, this journey, even of her most devoted grey riders. So many hours, riding hard and long, for no reason other than to prove to herself that it’s still hers to make: the choice, the journey, all of it. Such a lot to ask for the luxury of a morning spent in her own private rooms. And they, loyal and beautiful, with not even a word of complaint, a whisper of judgement, a murmur of anything at all.

They deserve so much more than a hearty meal, if the truth be known.

But alas, even a queen’s power has limits, and it is all she has to offer.

And so, digging her heels into her horse’s flank, she turns her face toward the horizon, turns her body toward beautiful Dagonaut, and rides.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

There is no fanfare to mark her return.

No parades or parties, no cheering or chanting or clapping in the streets, no acknowledgement at all.

Brief as the moment is, it is a relief.

She is not expected home for several days at least, and her face is not yet so well known by the people that it is recognised when she walks among them. With her cloak pulled tight about her shoulders, her hood up to obscure her features, her presence is no more remarkable than any other noble with a small retinue of guards, and she is free to make her way through the gates and the streets without drawing too much notice.

She rides slowly, revelling in the too-brief moment of anonymity, the scanty seconds — no more, never more — where she is no-one of any importance at all.

Then she reaches the palace, and the illusion is shattered the instant her feet touch ground.

A dozen voices — servants, footmen, ladies, even a couple of errant knights who really ought to be elsewhere — all calling her by some variation of her title: ‘my queen’ or ‘your Majesty’, a high-voiced ‘Highness’ or a desultory ‘madam’ that brings unwanted memories of King Favian and less unwanted ones of his oldest son.

Her name, the one thing in all the world that is still her own, remains noticeably unvoiced.

By the time she has fully dismounted, she is surrounded completely, on all sides. A pair of hands to take the reins and guide her horse to his well-earned rest, another to unburden her of her cloak, a third to guide her through the gates, the barred doors, through the dozen big and small barriers that still remain between herself and the private sanctuary of her chambers.

It is a journey of mere seconds, and yet she is more exhausted by the end of it than she was after riding through the night without pause.

Her lady-in-waiting shoos them all away when she arrives, knights and servants and everyone else all treated with the same firm hand. 

It is a firmness that Alianor has come to appreciate greatly over the years; she is seldom permitted to be so forthright herself in the faces of those who would wish her well, and it is a small kind of comfort to have someone by her side who need not show such restraint. A protector of a different kind, no less devoted than Ristridin and his riders, and no less cherished.

She closes the door behind them, her lady, as firmly as she sent the others away, and the silence that follows seems to clang like a tolling bell, ominous and oppressive. It takes Alianor a moment to get used to it after so much clamour, a moment to readjust to the privacy. And then—

And then, at long last, she is _home_.

Her shoulders slump. Only the smallest bit, just as much as she allows them to: exhaustion, yes but only in the proper measure. 

There are not many in Dagonaut she would allow to see such a thing; her lady-in-waiting certainly falls into that category — heaven knows, she’s seen her in far more compromising positions over the years — as would Ristridin if he were here. Perhaps one or two among her other attendants, if she’s feeling particularly trustful.

A woefully short list. Short enough to be counted on one hand, with fingers to spare. Such is her life now.

“Forgive the presumption, your Highness.” It is too formal, too proper, not the tone she would expect at all. The cadence sets Alianor’s nerves on edge, finely tuned as they are to hearing unvoiced things, and the temperature of the whole room seems to plummet. “You seemed... drained. I thought you might appreciate some privacy, to recover from your journey.”

‘Drained’. No doubt a diplomatic way of saying ‘utterly exhausted’.

“Is it so obvious?” She sighs. “I suppose I’ll have to work on that.”

“Only to those of us who know you well.” Flattery, without a doubt, but for once its hollowness is appreciated. “Did something happen at the summit? Only, you weren’t expected back for some time yet...”

“No.” Another sigh, swiftly swallowed. This is not the time or the place for that conversation, nor is it the appropriate company; she will bear the unpleasant experience alone, as she must every other. “I simply wanted to return home for a time, to the company of my own people, before I’m summoned away again.”

That earns her a raised eyebrow, and a low _tsk_.

“Again?” She clicks her tongue, assessing and shrewd. Perhaps she senses the nature of this summoning, perhaps not; either way, she does not approve. “King Favian certainly is eager to get his way, isn’t he?”

It’s not untrue, and that rankles. It rankles because it’s not untrue, yes, and it rankles all the more because she is not allowed to say it herself, because she’s not allowed to shake her head or grumble or mutter her agreement, because even a moment like this — taking comfort in the company of one as rightly cynical of the old man as she is — must be tempered and sanded down with the greatest care.

Alianor is queen: she is not permitted to have personal opinions at all, much less to let them be seen. It is unfair, yes, and the need for self-censorship is a constant struggle for one as free-spirited as she is, but so it is and so it must be.

“King Favian,” she says, with an evenness she certainly does not feel, “does what he does for the good of his nation. As I must do for mine.”

“Ah.” Such a small sound, and yet so very telling. “As you say, your Highness.”

More silence, then, but one that does not bear as heavily here as it would elsewhere. This room is hers, as close to a private sanctum as she will likely ever know. It is the only place in all of Dagonaut — perhaps in the whole world — where she can close her eyes and be tired or frustrated or discontent, where she can feel and think and breathe without having to smile or shrug or sigh, without the need to keep a charming speech or scathing riposte tucked ready behind her teeth. There are things she can’t say even here, of course, but she can at least allow her shoulder to slip and her smile to dim without fear of reprisal.

She tugs at the laces of her dress, uncomfortable and suddenly irritable. “Has there been any news in my absence?”

She means, specifically, news from Ristridin.

And perhaps that is obvious too, perhaps she is being particularly unsubtle this morning, her self-control and discipline roughened by the long journey, because—

Because all of a sudden her lady’s expression is very, very serious.

It is there, the answer, in the lines on her face, the hardness in her eyes, the giveaway flicker of emotion that she really should have learned by now to keep hidden. She is a practical woman, as she must be to serve the queen so intimately, keenly intelligent and perceptive to a fault, but she has always been fatally flawed when it comes to schooling her responses. A shame, to tell the truth; she could have made a phenomenal courtier, if only she were better able to keep herself in check.

Alas, however, she cannot, and the stammer that follows, even with no details, gives away far too much.

“Queen Alianor, I...”

And there it is at last: her name, spoken with the intimacy of one who knew it before it came coupled with ‘Queen’.

She expects it to comfort her, but it doesn’t: all she can hear is the weight buried beneath, the crack of sympathy, of—

 _Pity_.

Alianor’s stomach turns, soured by the sentiment. Her shoulders tighten, the looseness shaken out by dread, by the certainty that she knows where this is going, and a depth of pain she will never be allowed to let show. The exhaustion, a thrum of warmth softening her bones, bleeds away, cast aside like her cloak; she takes a deep, long breath, then another, and then what little sanctuary this place offers is gone. She is a queen again, and the lady in front of her is a servant, a subject, bound to her will. She cannot allow herself to see a person, not now. Not when—

“Tell me.”

An order, barked out sharply. Unkind, to be sure, and probably unfair, but what else can she do? She cannot speak any other way, lest the sentiment drag itself out of her against her will. She can only be what she is, what she was born to be: a sovereign, standing over her subject, demanding information. Anything more — anything _less_ — and she will shatter before she even hears the word.

A bow, and then her lady takes a long step back. The distance is a mark of respect, yes, an acknowledgement of the lines drawn fresh between them, but it is also a warning: _you will need space for this, my queen_.

Alianor’s heart stops. Her knees—

She will not allow them to buckle.

“I’m so sorry, your Highness.” Spoken to the floor, to her shoes, to the trail of earth and dirt brought in from the night’s journey. Fearful, perhaps, of meeting her eye, or else she wishes to offer some small sliver of privacy, to not be seen when the blow lands. “The news arrived yesterday evening. I’m afraid Sir Ristridin is...”

She does not finish.

As her queen, her sovereign, it is Alianor’s duty to finish for her, to ensure that the word is given its voice.

“Dead.”

A low sound: a sob or a sigh, she can’t tell. She’s not even completely sure that it comes from her lady and not from herself.

She hopes it’s not herself. She can’t allow—

“I’m afraid so, your Highness.” Definitely her lady: her voice is hoarse and weak. Good; she still has that much of her self-control, at least. “One of his riders gave me the news personally. The only survivor, as I understand it, from a terrible battle.”

There is true regret in her voice, roughening it all the more.

As there should be, Alianor thinks, with a bitterness that is wholly unbecoming. Her lady knows Ristridin nearly as well as Alianor herself does; she knows from personal experience what an honourable man he is.

 _Was_.

Alianor closes her eyes. She takes a moment, by necessity, to steady her breathing and make her chest still, to thin her lips and tighten her throat, to make ready every part of herself to ask and learn what she yet needs to know. It is not enough to suffer the blow; she must now deal with its aftermath.

And so she breathes, in and out as best she can, holding herself in perfect stillness until she is sure that her voice will prove less traitorous than her lady’s.

“The body?”

A tremor, fleeting but unmistakable. All the discipline in Dagonaut, it seems, is not enough to crush the weakness completely.

Out there, such a lapse in strength would be unacceptable. In here, it is only fractionally less so.

But it is done, it is heard, and she can’t take it back. She can only hope that her lady will be merciful in understanding.

And, of course, she is.

She keeps her distance, head still bowed, eyes still fixed on the dirt-stained floor. It would be all too easy — natural, even — to presume the gesture as one of supplication and reverence, but Alianor knows that it’s not so. There are only two in the kingdom she knows so intimately, and who know her so well in turn. Her lady, who has seen her in fits of melancholy and temper and worse, who watched her grow and endure the myriad miseries of that growth, who was there at her side when they placed Dagonaut’s king — her father — into his final resting place. Her lady, who knows exactly how to spare her in moments of deepest emotion... and Ristridin, who has known her almost as long and almost as well.

He will never see her grief and pain, or the tears she cannot shed. He wouldn’t, even if they were allowed. But she has to believe that wherever he is, he will know that they are there, that she would if she could.

“The body,” her lady says after a long beat. “I believe it was taken to be embalmed. That is, to be prepared for...” She clears her throat. “Understand, your Highness, we had no way of knowing when you would next return home. Preparations needed to be made, and so I took it upon myself to...”

She trails off, looking abashed and more than a little nauseated.

Alianor watches her closely, biting down on the inside of her cheek. It is a complex thing, wanting to offer reassurance, to place a hand on the poor woman’s shoulder and smile through her pain and say ‘you did well’ or ‘that was the proper decision’ or even a simple, quiet ‘thank you’. It is a complex thing, and it shouldn’t be, it should be as simple as breathing or standing. Human nature cries out for such things, compassion and comfort and kindness, her own no less than anyone else’s, and it is a constant, hated struggle to hold those impulses at bay in moments as dark as this.

It is not a queen’s place to touch her servants, even the most cherished and loved among them. It is not a queen’s place to share their sorrow, even when it is hers as well, nor is it her place to offer reassurance to one whose only role is to serve. It is her place to give orders — _take me to him_ , or _summon the man who brought him home_ , or whatever else the situation calls for — and nothing else. Especially not now, when she feels just as fragile herself. The wrong word, the wrong look, the wrong gesture or breath or touch, and she will break.

She cannot afford to break. She cannot afford to—

“A wise decision,” she says, holding her voice as stiff as her spine. “The best one could hope for, given the circumstances. I appreciate...”

So many things, each more wretchedly sentimental than the last.

_I appreciate that you were here to make the decision in my absence. I appreciate that it must have been difficult and painful for you. I appreciate that you understood what was right, what was necessary, and set aside your personal feelings to see it done. I appreciate you, for yourself, just as I appreciated him, and I cannot, I cannot—_

“Please,” she finishes, hating the hoarseness creeping into her voice. Not even a tremor this time, but still it gives away too much. “I would like to... to see him. That is, his body.”

“Now?” The surprise is a tangible thing, thoroughly misplaced given the circumstances; it adds a weight of tension to the air, making it heavy, unbreathable, and it is entirely too long before she catches herself and amends: “I only mean... you look so exhausted, Highness. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to get some rest before putting yourself through... that is, before attending to such a morbid duty?”

A tactful lie, and also a tactless one. It is worse, in its own way, than the truth: that she is more upset than she is able to show, that she does not want to see another dead body, that she does not want to have to hide her grief yet again. Worse, because emotion would make her human, whereas exhaustion merely makes her weak.

“If I look exhausted,” Alianor says with a sigh, “it only means that I should work on my endurance. Not shirk my duty. Ristridin served me well. Better than anyone, save perhaps yourself. I should have been here to receive him on his return, no matter his state.” She thinks again of the summit, and her teeth clench. “Having failed in that, I owe him, at the very least, a final moment to pay my respects.”

Her lady sighs too, softer and yet somehow rougher at the same time; she is still not schooling herself very well. Alianor wants to chasten her for it, but she finds she envies her too much.

“Given his present state, your Majesty, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind waiting an extra hour or two to receive you.”

True enough; he’s surely not going anywhere.

But she is. And she should not be here at all.

She takes a breath, lets it settle deep in the pit of her stomach, seething and churning with all those raw emotions she can never let rise to the surface.

“I will see him now,” she says again. This time, it is a command. “Make the necessary arrangements.”

She hears the sharp intake of breath, the only hint of doubt her lady will ever have the courage to voice. It echoes, igniting the still-cool air, oppressive and potent and razor-raw. Alianor is long accustomed to disappointing her political opponents, but it is a personal and particular kind of discomfort to disappoint those few whose opinions actually mean something to her.

It goes unvoiced, of course. Her servants, much like herself, have long since learned the importance of keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves. But the chill in the air remains, bristling and disquieting, and no amount of pretence on either side is enough to chase it away. It would be a shame, she thinks, to depart again on such frosty terms, but if it must be, so must it be.

“As you wish, your Highness.”

The words come heavily as well, and when her lady finally raises her head Alianor can see that a great deal of that weight has settled behind her eyes: weariness and sorrow and a thousand other things that can never have a voice, even — _especially_ — in the relative safety of this room. It is a far greater struggle than Alianor will ever admit, to see those things, meet them, and hold them.

“Thank you,” she says, and it means so much more.

Her lady nods, barely perceptible, and says only, “I’m sorry your return wasn’t met with kinder news.”

Alianor grants herself a final sigh, heavy with weariness and sorrow. An indulgence she surely shouldn’t allow, but here it is, and with it all the weight she sees reflected in her lady’s eyes, all the weight she must carry herself and never complain about, the tightly-locked box of emotion, of personal preference, of daring to mourn the passing of someone whose noble life was worth a hundred of hers.

“Indeed,” she says, hardening her voice to stone. “I’m sorry too.”

And she turns away, hardening her body too, until there is nothing left of the sighs or the sentiment, until she finds her face in the mirror and does not recognise it at all.

*

She is accompanied to the crypt by Ristridin’s surviving companion.

The only survivor, so she’s told, quite possibly the last face he saw before his death. He wears the experience heavily, with a haunted look in his eye — doubly notable for the way he doesn’t meet hers — and a tension to his posture that is ill-fitting of a grey rider.

Alianor doesn’t remark upon it. She will have to interrogate him soon enough, find out the details of what happened, the circumstances surrounding Ristridin’s death; she will have to do this sooner rather than later — the noose is tightening around her neck, counting down the too-short time left before she must depart for her meeting with Prince Viridian — but she will not do it now. Until she has looked down into Ristridin’s face and seen for herself that he is at peace, she will spare them both.

“Have your wounds been tended?” she asks instead, as they walk. “Your needs met? If there’s anything within my power...”

She trails off, feeling strangled and limited. Once again, for all her hopes and good intentions, she finds her hands are bound by a thousand political ties, able to offer only the tiniest fraction of what she would like. It would be foolish and dangerous to promise more than she can provide, and yet this man has clearly done much to deserve all the hospitality and kindness the crown can offer. It is unjust that she can’t tell him so, unjust that all she can give is a worthless token, unjust that he must bow his head and smile and pretend that it’s a blessing.

“You’re too kind, your Majesty.” If there is a ghost of insincerity behind the words, it is no less than she and her useless crown deserve. “But I assure you, I’m quite all right. Your servants tended my wounds and saw to my every need, and I’ve had plenty of time to recuperate from the...” His throat convulses. “...the journey.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She clasps her hands behind her back, because the temptation to touch him is too great to ignore. A pat on the arm, a clasp of his shoulder, a gesture, no matter how futile, to make herself human in his eyes. He deserves to be acknowledged, to be respected; she wishes she had the freedom to grant him that. “We’ll need to discuss what happened, if you’re able?”

He inclines his head, minutely. “I am, of course, at your Majesty’s service.”

The appropriate response, no doubt well rehearsed. She would expect no less from one trained by Ristridin himself. Still, it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, now more than ever, to see him simpering and scraping, bowing to her when he is the one who has fought and bled for his nation while she has done nothing at all.

She wants to point that out, to tell him that she sees it, sees him and all his merits. She wants him to know that her behaviour does not mirror her will, or her aching, tender heart. But of course, she can do no such thing: a queen is not supposed to have a heart at all, much less one that can beat so loudly.

It is always difficult, placing duty above desire, prioritising what she needs to do over what she wants. It is always hard, always painful, but she feels it now more keenly than she has in years. Whatever trouble this man has seen, it must have been terrible indeed to take the lives of his fellows... to say nothing of Ristridin, whom she knows personally to be an exceptional survivor. This young man, the only one who yet lives, bears himself without so much as a grimace for his own suffering, but she doesn’t need to be the shrewd judge of character she is to know that it is there.

He deserves more than an interrogation. He certainly deserves more than hollow, useless promises of ‘anything within my power’ when they both know that she has none. He deserves to be treated like the hero he surely is, and she like the devoted servant who owes him her life. But none of those things can come to pass, and she despises herself for the way she squares her shoulders and angles her chin upwards, the way she holds herself with an illusion of power that fools no-one and drains what little strength she still has.

She despises herself, too, for the authority in her tone, unyielding as steel, when she speaks. Necessary, of course, if she is to get through the sentence without breaking, but she despises it even so.

“When I’m finished here.” This, she manages only as they make their arrival, the crypt towering mournfully over them both. “If it suits you, sire, we can take breakfast and then you can tell me what happened.”

It is a strange, unexpected kind of intimacy, to offer breakfast to a rider, but a necessary one. She wishes it wasn’t, in truth; there are few things she can think of that are more likely to strip her of her appetite than discussing the violent death of a cherished friend, and she can’t imagine that her companion — forced, as he was, to watch that death in real-time — would feel any greater enthusiasm.

But she has not eaten since the start of the summit, almost a full day past by now, and even then just a little. She recalls entirely too well the dozens of eyes on her, gauging her manners, her taste, the tightness of her corset; even if she weren’t already queasy with the prospect of ‘negotiating’ with King Favian, the judging looks alone were more than enough to ensure that she ate only as much as was necessary to keep from fainting. 

A king may enjoy the heartiest of feasts, it seems, and somehow this is a mark of his virility. If a queen, however, allows so much as a murmur of appreciation for the slightest morsel... suddenly, a scandal.

Thus, she is nearly as famished as she is exhausted; her stomach, like the sockets of her eyes, feels hollow and gnawed to pieces. And with so little time before she must depart again, to make her meeting with Prince Viridian at his wretched blood-soaked camp, there is only so much left for such things as food and rest. She did not expect to be met with _this_ , the death of her most cherished and loyal rider, and all the awfulness that goes with it. She did not expect to have to rearrange her plans and her life to make room for...

For...

She looks up at the crypt, silhouetted and shadowy even in daylight, and finds herself with no appetite at all.

Whether he senses her discomfort or not, her companion shows no sign. He bows, respectful and dignified right to the last, and says, “It would be an honour to dine with your Majesty.”

Alianor allows the ghost of a smile, slightly wry and not at all warm. “If only the circumstances were kinder.”

“As your Majesty says.” He, unlike her, has the luxury of letting his sorrow show. It is appropriate for a soldier to grieve the loss of his superior officer, and he wears the pain very well. “Ristridin was a phenomenal leader. And, with your permission to say it, madam, a phenomenal friend.”

Alianor knows this to be true. It hurts terribly to look this poor man in the eye and not be able to tell him so.

She swallows a couple of times, silencing her stammering heart, and does not move until she feels it settling back behind her ribs where it belongs. The lingering taste of grief unspilled fills her more than the breakfast will, and leaves her just as nauseous.

“Wait for me here,” she says. “I’ll try not to be too long.”

Indeed, she cannot be too long: her duty demands brevity.

Just one more injustice on top of all the rest. Ristridin deserves — _deserved_ — all the time in the world, and more besides. It is wrong that his should be cut so far short, and wronger still that she cannot give him more than a moment of hers.

She wishes that it could be otherwise. She wishes—

She shakes her head, steels herself, and steps inside.

*

Inside, it is dark and dank, and her cloak does little to shield her from the chill.

That’s no bad thing; she’s not sure she would want to be any warmer, even if it were possible. This is a place of death, a place where the greatest knights and riders and heroes of Dagonaut lie in eternal rest; it is not a place to be comfortable and coddled, shrouded and swaddled in the finest silks and satins. If she is uncomfortable here, if she is cold and unsettled, it is nothing less than what she should be. The men and women who lie here gave up their lives for Dagonaut; if she cannot give up even a moment’s comfort for them, what right does she have to call herself their queen?

Sometimes she wonders if she has any right to do that at all, regardless of moments like this.

She has done so little in her life, and they did so much with theirs. They, who lived and bled and died in the service of Dagonaut while she grew up sheltered and protected under her father’s arm, her lady’s smile, and Ristridin’s sword. These knights, these riders, these heroes who sacrificed every part of themselves in service to a crown she doesn’t even wear. And she, their queen, with her pretty face and her witty smile, whoring herself out to Unauwen’s princes in the vain hopes of sustaining peace. She, who eats and drinks and rides on a whim, while they — her knights, her riders, her heroes — hurl themselves into the breach again and again and again to keep her safe.

It is not right. It is not fair or just. She barely deserves to even lay her eyes on this place, much less enter.

And yet here she is, standing among the greatest men and women Dagonaut have ever known, feeling small and stupid and undeserving. She is, for once, desperately grateful that she’s alone, that none of her servants or subjects are here to see that she has no smile to wear, no speech to give, that she is open and laid bare, with no mask or illusion ready to hide her unworthiness.

She is thoroughly unprepared for the sight of Ristridin’s lifeless body.

She is _completely_ unprepared for the pain that explodes in her chest.

She—

She does not sob. She swallows, she sickens, she sighs, but she does not sob. She has been trained her whole life to keep such things on the inside, to hide the rawness within her; after so long, she’s not sure she could let out the grief even if she wanted to.

And how desperately she wants to.

Ristridin deserves her tears. He deserves her grief, her pain, her sorrow, and more besides. He deserves to know that she feels it in her chest, the raw, ragged, razorblade of pain, quite probably the closest thing she’ll ever know to the suffering that he and his kind must endure every day of their lives. It hurts, _she_ hurts, and there is nothing in the world she wants more than to let him see it and hear it and know how deeply she feels it, to look down into his blind, sightless eyes — they will never see her face again, never remark on its lines, its curves, the lightness or weight behind her smiles and frowns — to look down into his soul and let him know that she cares, that she grieves, that she—

“What will become of us,” she whispers, as much to cut off the wave of emotion as anything else, “without your guiding hand?”

It is a falsehood, ‘we’, and a truth as well. She speaks for herself, of course — she, who became everything she is under his gentle tutelage and patient instruction — and she speaks too on behalf of all Dagonaut, who have known his love and protection for even longer than she has.

She doesn’t look at him. She can’t look at him. She doesn’t _deserve_ —

No. No, what she deserves is of no consequence here. _He_ deserves it.

He deserves to know that his queen — whom he served so loyally and diligently in life — has the strength and the stomach to look down on his face in death. He deserves to know that his princess — whom he trained to have that strength, that stomach, that power — has enough left in her to find one of those smiles he loved so much, to grace him once last time with the warmth and benevolence that meant so much to him, the radiance he always said would always light his way home.

Flattery, of course, meant to make her laugh and blush. But even so...

She takes a shaking breath, steels herself, and looks down at his body.

He is so still, so silent. He lies there, unmoving, unbreathing, in the centre of the crypt, in repose and bearing the illusion of peace. His body has clearly been treated, cleaned and embalmed and dressed in silken finery: loose at the shoulders, tight at the neck, she knows he would have despised it. Still, it is attire befitting the leader of the grey riders, and the sight of it brings back unwanted memories of her father, the day she looked down at him just like this.

She recalls the moment too clearly, his empty eyes, his too-still body prepared and preserved just like this, his clothes carefully chosen by people who had never exchanged even a word with him—

Her stomach lurches, a burst of nausea so violent it almost drives her to her knees. She is glad that she hasn’t eaten yet, and glad too, in a way, for the discomfort. It is a necessary distraction from the grief, the pain both old and new, the sorrow and the vulnerability, the _loneliness_...

One might think she’d be well accustomed to loneliness by now.

Indeed, she is.

But being used to it does not make it less when it strikes like this, and she feels its lash now more keenly than she has in a long, long time.

It is easier, in a sick sort of way, to focus on the physical discomfort instead. Easier, without a doubt, to feel the tug of misery in her body than the gaping hole carved out of her her heart. The laments of the physical world she can push down without a thought, out of sight and mostly out of mind; indeed, she’s been doing it all her life.

The churning in her stomach, sickness and horror, a boulder’s weight settling inside of her like a bad meal; the pressure on her chest, the way her lungs suddenly have to struggle just to draw each breath, a full-body seizure that she’s long since come to recognise as panic. The two of them together take hold of her body, but she has spent a lifetime learning how to control that particular part of her. It is easier to swallow down her gorge, to will her ribs to split and her lungs to expand, than it is to drive back the scream of emotion that caused it.

She does not sob. She doesn’t even blink. She holds herself still and stoic, pushing down the tears that want to form.

The air in this place is too dry. She blames that for her inability to blink, for the sudden soreness behind her eyes.

She is so tired.

And she looks down into his face, Ristridin and his empty, unseeing eyes, and she wonders — in a senseless, ridiculous moment of wilful forgetting — how he can bear to be in here.

As if he had a choice.

As if he—

The instinct rises up in her, sharp and visceral, to cover her mouth with her hand. More nausea or more horror, she can’t tell, but whatever it is — and perhaps it’s both of them together — it is thoroughly overwhelming. She forces it back too, eyes closed and breathing ragged, with the same power and passion as she forced back the tears. Spine stiff and straight, shoulders back, she clasps her hands behind her back to keep them out of the way, presenting the perfect, practised illusion of poise and grace.

No-one will ever see the marks left by her nails in her palms, or the tension cording the veins in her wrists. They are hidden, like her heart, behind the rippling fabric of her dress.

Ristridin, unseeing, says nothing. She wishes, desperately, that he would chide her, that he would call her on her lack of composure, that he would see through the illusion like he always did before.

Alas, he does not. And he never will again.

Her shoulders shake with the effort of holding them straight. Her spine feels ready to crack. Her nails, still digging into her palms, threaten to draw blood.

She looks down at him, and feels—

She looks down at him, and _feels_.

“See what you’ve done,” she rasps. “I’m a wreck because of you.”

She is, truly and sincerely. Even with her dry eyes and her stiff shoulders, her perfect posture and pristine poise, still she is a wreck. And if he could see her, he would know it as surely as she does.

But he can’t. He will never see her, or anything else, ever again.

She coughs. The dry air seethes in her throat, makes it feel raw and razed.

“A curse on this place.”

A concession, hidden in a lie: for a moment, only a moment, she closes her eyes, lets the absolute darkness bring her a small measure of comfort, a moment — only a moment, always a moment, never a moment more — to steel herself before opening them and facing him again.

“What would you have me do now, Ristridin? You taught me everything I know. You taught me how to ride, how to hunt, how to ensure others see only what I want them to. You taught me how to rule like you would: with grace and poise, with _dignity_ —”

The word cracks on the air, not like a fracture but like a whip.

What good is dignity now, she thinks fiercely. What good is ruling with grace and poise, what good is being wise like her father or patient like her mentor, when none of those things could protect her — or Dagonaut — from such tragedy as this?

She thinks briefly of Crown Prince Iridian. Charming, bumbling, foolish Iridian, who has no grace and no poise, who she knows will rule without a shred of dignity.

Iridian would weep if he were here. Of that she has no doubt. Faced with the body of one he loved, he would be a blubbering, sobbing mess, and not a soul would ever judge him for it.

Good for him.

She thinks, too, of his brother, her soon-to-be husband and conquerer. Viridian the violent, Viridian the virulent. Viridian, who has driven more men to their deaths than Alianor will probably ever meet in her life. He would shed no tears, she’s sure, but not like her. He would shed no tears because he would not care. He would spare not even a moment’s thought, even for a trusted friend or cherished companion. 

Viridian would surely show dignity in such a moment as this, and poise and grace, all the virtues so becoming of a good monarch.

No. 

All the virtues becoming of a good _queen_.

While King Iridian bawls like a child and is praised for laying bare his heart.

The injustice burns, turns the strangling sorrow to something harder, a boiling, burning wrath. The princes of Unauwen will never have to face the choices that she does: to let her feelings be seen and be called ‘weak’, or to show none and be ‘unfeeling’. They and their wretched, worthless liquor-soaked father—

Indeed, her own father as well.

He never had to think so hard about such matters. This, she remembers well. A moment’s sorrow shared with his people was a sign of strength and solidarity. Compassion in a man is a rare kind of beauty; that he allowed it to it to shine in moments like this was a part of his wisdom. It made him more powerful, not less. If he were still alive, his tears would be welcome.

Even here, even alone, his daughter’s are not.

Ristridin taught her that. Long before she was queen, long before she ever thought she would be, he saw. He saw and he knew, and he taught her things she never imagined she would need to know.

“You’ll have twice as much to prove, young Majesty,” he told her once, with a smile that seemed to sparkle like afternoon sunlight. “Unfair, maybe, but so it is. Don’t let them see enough of you to judge.”

He never said that it was because of her sex. He only reminded her that her father would leave behind a great legacy, and that it was her duty to uphold it as best she could, with honour and pride and—

 _Dignity_.

He embodied it. Every minute, every moment, every breath of his life. Graceful, poised, beautiful: Ristridin was dignity poured into human skin.

Alianor wears it like a perfume, like the heavy fabrics of her best gowns, clinging and colourful and chosen by someone else. She wears it like she’s been sewn into it or pricked and pierced with it, little pieces hanging off her like gilded jewellery. It weighs more than she ever imagined, dignity, and there are times when the effort of carrying it is almost more than she can endure.

But she does. Every day, effortful, she endures it. Every day, every night, every moment, she bears it on her back, her shoulders, her head. And no-one who sees her will ever know how terrible a weight it is.

Except him. Ristridin, who knew exactly how difficult it would be for a young queen to show dignity, who taught a young princess to carry it long before she ever needed to. Ristridin, who polished his own like the gleaming scale of his armour, who tended hers like the most delicate, fragile flower.

Back then, it was the only way she could have imagined being tended.

Now, with hardness boiling in her, she wishes she could have ordered him to be hard with her too, to teach her as he himself must have been taught, and never spare her the burn or the burden, the weariness or the weight.

“I would see you avenged,” she says to him now, scorched and sore. “I would order your riders to hunt down your attackers and destroy them all for what they did. And they’d be glad to do it.”

They would indeed, for they loved him just as deeply as she does.

Ristridin knows it too, of course. And he would know as well, if he could hear, that even in her powerlessness she would have power enough for this. A word let slip in the privacy of a breakfast meeting, and his men and women would stop at nothing to avenge him. He gave their life meaning; the least they could do is ensure the same is granted to his death.

She wouldn’t even need to make it an order, merely a suggestion: that the crown of Dagonaut will be grateful to learn of justice being done. She wouldn’t implicate herself, or them, or anyone. Just a word, just a smile, just an idea given form, and all would be—

 _No_.

No, he would never approve of such a thing.

She knows this. Just as well as he would know how to stop her: to rest a hand on her shoulder, smile that sunlit smile of his, and silence the idea before it even took shape in her mind.

“Always so quick with that temper, young Majesty.” There, again, that smile; it gleams in her mind’s eye, illuminating this dank and dreadful place. “You must learn to temper it better.”

 _Temper your temper_. She always appreciated the poetry in that.

“I will,” she says aloud, now, so many years too late. “I’ll temper myself and my temper, because I know it’s what you’d tell me to do. You’d tell me it’s for the good of Dagonaut, to not seek out needless conflict. And maybe it is. But you know that’s not why I’m doing it.”

True enough, on all counts; she never could hide from him. If a thought existed in her, no matter how nascent or foolish, he would always see it, as clear as the sunlight reflecting his smile.

Possibly he’d tell her that it doesn’t matter, whether she holds herself in check for him or for Dagonaut, for the good of the nation or simply as a last mark of respect to the man who taught her so much. Her reasons may be her own, he would say, so long as her actions embrace what is right.

Or, then again, maybe he wouldn’t.

Maybe he would remind her, hard-eyed and soft-smiling, that her reasons cannot be her own any longer, that they must be forever Dagonaut’s, that she surrendered her right to reason and opinion, even to the privacy of thought, when she inherited her father’s crown.

Maybe—

It doesn’t matter. She could spent a lifetime wondering what he might think or say, and never know for sure.

Because he’s gone. He is not here to reassure her or to chide her or to teach her anything at all. Perhaps some part of his spirit lingers and can hear her, but it is too far gone to share its opinions.

She’s not sure whether to be grateful for that, or to feel the loss all the more deeply.

She wishes she had time to decide, to wonder, to really feel out the myriad messy feelings that come with death and loss and grief. She wishes she could linger here, in this place she hates so much, and spend as much time with him as he deserves. It is cold and dank and miserable, but even with all of that she finds she’s not yet ready to leave, to commit herself, dry-eyed and stiff-shouldered and feigning strength, to the knowledge that she will never see him again.

She must. She knows this too. And he would tell her so, still smiling.

 _The world won’t wait for you, young Majesty_.

This, she knows as well. This, she did not need him to tell her. This—

The world has never waited for her. Never.

It refused to wait when it took away her father — too early, much too early — and made her a monarch before her time. It refused to wait when it brought Crown Prince Iridian to her side, when it teased her with the idea of a marriage she might be able to stomach. It certainly refused to wait at the summit, all too eager to sell her off as a prize to the bloodthirsty conquerer.

Viridian will want her precisely as little as she wants him. This she already knows, without ever needing to meet and see it on his face. But knowing it doesn’t make the task less inevitable, nor does it make her less obliged to see it through.

It certainly doesn’t make the world more willing to wait for her.

“I’ll take your lessons to heart,” she says to Ristridin. It is such a small offering, worth less than nothing, even to a man who never wanted any reward for his love and lessons. Still, she owes him so much, and this is all she has, the only speck of power she truly holds. “And I’ll make sure you’re honoured and remembered as the hero you—”

Her voice betrays her. Here, in the dark, dank crypt, with no witnesses and no-one to judge, it catches and breaks.

She cannot finish. She can’t—

To finish the sentence — ‘the hero you _were_ ’ — is to acknowledge that it is now past, that it is over, finished, done, that his _life_ is—

She must. She knows she must.

But the world outside is hungry, and it will not wait while she chokes on the past-tense, while she breathes in dry air and pretends that’s why her eyes are sore and her throat is raw.

When she returns for good, she will do everything properly. When she has had her meeting with Viridian, when she has acquiesced to becoming his reward, to making Dagonaut his as well, when she has done all that her duty could possibly demand of her, she will come back here and give Ristridin the funeral he deserves. She will make sure all of Dagonaut honours and celebrates him, and none more than her, the temperamental young princess who learned everything she’d ever need to know from the sparkle of sunlight behind his smile.

But now...

Now, the world won’t wait. And she can delay no longer.

She bows her head and presses a kiss to his cold forehead.

“Thank you, sire,” she whispers. “For your service, and for your...” She takes a breath, takes a moment, then throws all illusions of dignity to the wind. “For _everything_.”

She is sure that he would chide her, if he could, for such a grave lapse in decorum, for allowing her emotions, her stupid, senseless sentiment, to override what is right and proper. She is sure that he would shake his head, flash that smile, and threaten to muss her perfectly coiffed hair. She is sure — she is absolutely certain — that he would call her all sorts of teasing names, and teach her to be better.

But he is not here to chide her or tease her or teach her. He is not here to do anything at all, and never will be again. 

And so she will do not what she should but what she wants. She will kiss his brow, whether or not it is proper, and she will thank him not just for his service but for _everything_ , and she will mean it with every breath in her body, and she will know exactly how he would react, what he would say if he could. And she will want to cry — does want to cry — but she won’t. She will take his lessons to heart, just as she promised she would, and she will straighten her back and square her shoulders, and she will smile.

For him.

She will bow, yes, and she will bid him a final fond farewell. But she will smile, too, just like he taught her: a sparkle of sunlight to illuminate this cold, dark, lifeless place.

She hopes its light will linger once she’s gone.

If it is anything at all like his, she knows that it will.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

Breakfast is exactly as maudlin as she expects it to be.

They take the meal in her room, she and Ristridin’s lone surviving companion. It is not something she would ordinarily allow — the risk of scandal being far too great, were it to get out that the queen of Dagonaut was entertaining knights or riders in her private chambers — but the situation being what it is, she has no other choice.

She so rarely does these days. Her choice, much like her power, seems to be a gift worth only as much as she can compel others to believe in it. Anyone brave enough to look closer would pierce the veneer in a heartbeat, and the whole thing would fall immediately to pieces.

Ristridin’s death is a delicate matter, and potentially one of great importance, both personal and national. She cannot afford to risk the conversation being overheard, not even by a servant. And, in any case, she has no time for the pomp and ceremony of taking breakfast in full view of the court.

She shouldn’t even be in Dagonaut at all. The fewer who see her here, the better it will be; if that means risking a little indignity should the incident be discovered, so be it. She has suffered far worse humiliations these last few days, and will no doubt suffer more again in the days to come.

Her companion is appropriately melancholy, even before she broaches the unwelcome subject. He eats sparsely, well-mannered but noticeably shy, and he keeps his gaze turned downwards, fixed on the silverware or the plates or the tablecloth, anywhere rather than look up and meet hers.

It is oddly comforting, having a dining companion who doesn’t watch her every move, gauging her choice of conserve as if it were a life-or-death decision affecting the fate of nations, studying every detail of what she eats, how much, and why. It’s a large part of why she is so much in need of sustenance now: the feast at the summit was a spectacle, and she the unwitting attraction. To delude herself otherwise would be to miss the whispers and murmurs, the Unauwen titters when her selections failed to coincide perfectly with their king’s. It did as little for her appetite then as the memory of Ristridin’s sightless eyes does now.

She eats even less than her companion. Empty or not, her stomach is sour, shaken and nauseous from her time in the crypt, exhaustion sharpening both of those things until they burn inside her like acid. She has no appetite, and would eat nothing at all if she had the choice, but of course she does not. There is too much still ahead of her to risk fainting on the road... or, far worse, in front of her future husband.

And so she eats because she has to, every bite bearing the weight of responsibility, of politics and politeness and what is right and good. It is a duty, the meal, just as her dress is a duty, or the gold glinting around her neck and about her head, or the laces of her corset pulled tight enough to hurt, the angles of her body drawn like the string of a bow, taut and angular, the loss of breath a necessary sacrifice.

The illusions — for that is all they will ever be — are necessary too: they make her what she is. Just as she needs to give the illusion of effortless beauty in the way she dresses and wears her hair, so too must she present the illusion of effortless strength when she and Viridian meet. He needs to know that she will not kneel to him, no more than he will kneel to his bloodless brother, no matter their titles. Favian would name his son ‘king of Dagonaut’: it is Alianor’s duty to present the perfect, impenetrable illusion that Dagonaut is hers alone, that her hand may be a fair reward for a returning conquerer but her crown is not.

She cannot do that if she is weakened by hunger. No amount of primping, preening, or preparation can protect her reputation if her body decides to betray her. She must do all she can to ensure that her it remains strong, to ensure that it remains _powerful_.

It is, after all, the only part of her that is.

So she eats. And she says nothing while her quiet, shy companion does the same, eating as a matter of duty, not a scrap of appetite between them. And the moments tick by, excruciating and agonising, but she bites the inside of her cheek and bides her time, showing as much patience as she can with half an eye on the sun as it pulses in through the stained glass windows, its hazy light a mark of the passing seconds, minutes, hours...

No. She can’t afford hours. She can barely afford minutes.

“Please,” she says at last, both hasty and hesitant, “if it’s not too painful for you, sire, I must know what happened.”

A stupid, insensitive way of phrasing it, and she instantly hates herself for it. How could this conversation be anything but ‘too painful’?

To his credit, he pays no mind to her lack of tact, snapping to attention immediately. A heavy sigh, a heavier swallow, then he sets down his cutlery and, without preamble, begins.

“You should know,” he says, eyes still fixed on the tablecloth, “Sir Ristridin died fighting for what he believed was right. Whether he acted rashly or appropriately, it’s not my place to assume, but your Majesty knows better than anyone that his actions have always been in service to the crown of Dagonaut.”

 _To you,_ he means, but has the decency not to say. _He died in service to you._

It is very telling. Perhaps the young man doesn’t realise how much, perhaps he knows exactly. It is no secret, after all, that Ristridin and his riders weren’t the only ones scouring the land in search of Sir Tiuri’s runaway son. Fantumar and his men, bull-headed and self-serving as always, are hot on the boy’s heels as well, under the pretence of avenging one of their own.

As if even a naive young queen would be foolish enough to believe that.

It is one of many reasons why she felt so heavily the chains of Ristridin’s absence: his mission was far from typical. His doggedness, Fantumar’s involvement... the two together painted a vivid, visceral picture long before any of this. It is practically unheard of, grey riders and knights of Dagonaut being at odds over a single misdeed. It is absolutely unprecedented that one would lose his life. That the other may have actually been _involved_...

Alianor grips her fork hard enough that the silver warps and bends. 

She doesn’t want to have to ask, doesn’t want to implicate one of her father’s knights in something so heinous, but...

“Was it Fantumar?”

But she must know.

She watches his responses carefully, the shadows in his eyes and the lines of his mouth, the thousand little tells that will give her the answer she seeks before he finds his voice. She hopes—

No.

His throat convulses, a spasm that shudders through his entire body, and there is her answer: ill news, perhaps even worse than she anticipated. It is a warning, the spasm, telling her to brace herself, letting her know that what is to come will shake her to the bone.

And, indeed, it does.

“I’m afraid not.” His eyes are dark, when he finally raises them to meet hers, and seem to glimmer with pain and fear. Another warning, no less powerful. He is aware, at least nascently, of how keen a blow this will be. “It was riders, your Majesty. Red riders.”

If she weren’t already sitting down, Alianor is quite sure that her legs would have gone out from under her. Her breakfast, meagre as it was, threatens to make a reappearance; the effort of holding it down is all that keeps her from collapsing completely.

“Red riders,” she echoes in a queasy croak. “ _Viridian’s_ red riders?”

“If there’s another kind,” he says, the words blurted out without a thought for their impropriety, “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with them.”

A little glib, certainly, but not indecorously so. Not that she’s in any condition to berate him for it, even if it was.

His expression, when her vision clears enough to see it, paints a vivid picture. He clearly realises that this is a blow — a direct conflict between the interests of Dagonaut and Unauwen — but of course he can’t possibly grasp how deep it runs for her personally. No-one here knows that Prince Viridian is to be her husband, that his arrogant, drunken father would have him take the throne of Dagonaut as a prize for his victory over Eviellan. No-one knows that, save herself and Unauwen’s ruling men.

So when she looks up at her poor dining companion, her loyal grey rider and Ristridin’s man to the end, when she sees him more worried about her than shaken by his own dreadful experience, it turns her stomach all the more to think that he has no idea how much hotter that worry should burn, how much more shaken he ought to be.

She will spare him that unpleasant truth. Not out of any compassion — she cannot afford that, no more than she can afford softness or sentiment — but as a matter of necessity: if what he says is true, if Prince Viridian and his soldiers really are to blame for the death of Dagonaut’s most loyal, most faithful, most dedicated rider, there is far more at stake from her soon-to-be-meeting — to say nothing of her soon-to-be-marriage — than she ever could have anticipated.

Yet another weight to bear, on top of so many. As if it wasn’t complicated enough, being forced to marry a ruthless conquerer with no kingdom of his own. As if it wasn’t complicated enough, being forced to marry someone so violent and so cruel, without now also knowing just how far that violence and cruelty might reach.

If he’s already made an opening gambit against Dagonaut...

If she knows this and acquiesces to marrying him anyway...

She stands, unable to stay seated a moment longer, and paces the length of the table twice before she trusts herself to ask, hushed and urgent, “You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes, Majesty. We saw them ourselves. The boy, Tiuri... he knew they were in Dagonaut before we did. He tried to warn us, even as we tried to drag him home in chains.”

An honourable gesture indeed. Remarkably so, if true.

But then, if what she’s heard of the boy is even one-tenth true, it seems that little Tiuri is a remarkable young man in every way.

She closes her mind to that thought, swallowing hard. “And Ristridin?”

“Died protecting the boy.” His voice shatters into an almost-sob, a jagged wrench of emotion that she wishes she had the freedom to echo herself. “Him and four others. Could be more still, before the day is out: your healers are very talented, your Majesty, but their wounds are serious. You know what they’re like, the red bastards: as ruthless as their master, when he wants something.”

Alianor’s corset squeezes her ribs. She finds herself suddenly unable to breathe.

“Dire news indeed,” she manages, too shaken to care that she sounds as sick as she feels. “Thank you for taking the time to relay it. I know it can’t have been easy to...”

And there, despite her best efforts: a weakening of her voice, a tremor.

Her rider, attentive and duty-bound even now, and every bit as loyal as his leader was in life, raises a brow. “Are you well, Majesty?”

The urge to be truthful twists in her side like a dull blade. Just one more pain she must try to breathe through and pretend it doesn’t exist.

“Of course,” she says, willing her jaw to unclench.

And so she must be. 

No. So she _will_ be.

She will bid farewell to this poor, confused young man, swear to him that Ristridin and his brothers will be given the highest posthumous honours, that their names will be on the tongues of every knight and novice for the rest of her reign and beyond, that their blood wasn’t spilled in vain. She will do this, smiling, sighing, finally frowning, and call it valour and call it honour and call it justice.

She will do these things, and she will be well when she does. She will be well, yes, and fine and good.

She has to be, if she is to do even the smallest part of what she now knows she must: to juggle the pain of Ristridin’s passing, her anger at Viridian — at _Unauwen_ — for this unprecedented assault against her people and her home, the horror that comes from seeing these things tangled up in politics and promises, and the anger — the _fury_ — of recalling Viridian’s name on her tongue as she bowed to his father and agrees to meet and then marry him.

It is a mess. It is a wreck, far worse than the maelstrom inside her head and heart, and she alone must be the one to untangle it all.

If she can’t...

No. She _must_.

Hers is not the only life in play here. It is not only her future at stake, her finger that will wear his ring or his head that will wear her crown. It is Dagonaut, her beloved nation and her beloved people, and even with a thousand arrows flying at her from a thousand different directions, it is her duty to thread herself needle-thin through the space between them. Viridian’s red riders must be dealt with, of course, but so too must his father’s proposal. And neither of these things may be allowed to touch the other.

Her head aches with the complexity of it, the conflicting chaos of what she must do but won’t, what she will do but shouldn’t, and what she wants to do but can’t. Her heart, too, aching with loss and unshed tears, Ristridin’s unseeing eyes scorched like a brand upon her chest. Her stomach, aching with a breakfast she never wanted, the nausea and the certainty that it will probably be the last meal she will eat in at least a day. And her bones — strong and solid, holding her upright while the rest of her threatens to break apart — aching and aching and aching with exhaustion too heavy to bear.

She _aches_. All of her, every part, _aches_.

It is a pain she knows well, vividly but not often; she hasn’t felt it this powerfully since the day she said her public farewell to her father. Raw and ragged, grieving and frightened and alone, forbidden to shed a tear lest she appear fragile in front of her new subjects. She aches now as she ached then, and she knows now, just as she did then too, that there is nothing she can do to ease it.

“Thank you,” she says to her— to _Ristridin’s_ rider. “For your service, for your report, and for your company. I will see to it that Ristridin and the others we’ve lost are given the highest honours, and that you are as well.”

He blinks at that, just as Ristridin would have done in his place. Unable to fathom the significance of what he has done, the vast weight it lifts off her shoulders every time she looks at him — at Ristridin, at any one of her grey riders — and knows that they, at least, will remain faithful. To the crown and to the head that wears it, but most of all to Dagonaut. He and all of his brothers and sisters are the hope and honour of this great nation, and powerless painted figureheads like herself need to acknowledge it at every opportunity.

This one may be painful. No: it most definitely will be painful. But experience has taught her that most good opportunities are, and that the pain should not outstrip the courage and strength of those who surrendered their lives to try and lessen it.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Highness,” he says, shy and self-conscious once again. “But any honour belongs to Sir Ristridin. If it weren’t for him...”

There are a thousand ways to end that sentence, and she suspects his young charge only knows the tiniest part of them. Either way, he offers none.

Not that it matters; that’s not what her promise was about, nor should it be.

“You are too modest, sire,” she says, with all the political delicacy of someone who has done this sort of thing her whole life. “I assure you, you are no less deserving than your esteemed leader.”

For all his lack of decorum in other places, he has enough, at least, to defer here. No doubt he still believes himself unworthy — a sentiment she can quite easily understand — but he knows better than to push too far when arguing with one so far above him. And so, stammering, he accepts. Head bowed low, face obscured, he mumbles a “thank you” so quiet and bashful that it might almost have been comical were the situation less tragic.

He is a soldier through and through, it seems; from the moment he entered her chambers, he was ill at ease, unsure of how to behave, of what to do with his hands or his eyes, of what was expected of him in such perfumed company as hers. It is a jarring contrast to her usual dining companions, and it makes the misery of this particular meeting a little softer, to not have to seek out eye-contact with every other bite, or dig down deep and force a smile when smiling the last thing in the world she wants to do.

“I thank your Highness for your hospitality,” he says, weighted and clumsy. “If there’s nothing else you would know, I should probably return to my duties. My companions...”

He trails off, blanching pale, and she silently curses herself to have let such a thing slip her mind. He made mention of them before, his companions: those not yet dead, who may or may not live out the day. The tightness in her chest grows tighter still to think of it again. More graves, more grief, and she must not allow that thought to pass across her face where he might see it and know.

“Of course.” Her voice sounds wrong, despite her best efforts to tame it. Too high, too warbly; she sounds like a dying bird. “Take as much time as you need to be with them. And, please, be sure to send them my thanks as well.”

It is worth less than nothing, her thanks. Gratitude, appreciation, honour; what do any of them mean in the face of loss and death? She knows this, and she hates herself for pretending it has value, but if her companion sees the sham for what it is he has the decency not to remark on it.

He doesn’t muster a smile, a sentiment she certainly shares, and he still seems unsure of what he should do with his hands. He shoves them behind his back, bobbing his head in a strange jerking motion, like he can’t quite decide whether to nod or bow, then inches nervously towards the door.

“As you say, your Highness,” he mumbles. “And, um... that is, on behalf of all your grey riders, we’re sorry for your loss. Ristridin was the greatest of all of us, and he spoke of you so often and with such affection, I...”

She holds up a hand, silencing before he can doom her by saying more. “Please.”

She means: _please, such flattery is unnecessary_.

And she means: _please, I cannot bear to hear it._

And she means: _please go away, please leave now, while I still have some shred of my dignity left._

She has no idea know which of those things he hears, but his response is the correct one:

He offers one last awkward bow, and then he is gone, leaving her alone with her privacy and pain.

*

Alone, she takes more time than she should to recover herself.

Complete solitude is not something she gets very often, and experience has taught her that when it comes she should hold fast and cherish it. She can afford no more than a moment, just like always, but that moment is enough to bring her back from the brink of collapse, turning her once more into the queen that Dagonaut needs. It is a gift beyond measure, in the moment when she needs it most.

She centres herself, swallows down the last lingering aches, focuses her thoughts and her mind, breathes and breathes and breathes... and then, at last, she steps in front of the mirror and stares at herself as if she were one of her subjects.

There are dark, heavy lines beneath her eyes. Her smile is tremulous, forced, and her lips twitch downward at the corners. Her skin is as pale as she has ever seen it, perhaps as pale as it’s ever been. She looks like she feels: ill and exhausted and shaking with sorrow.

It’s not good enough. It’s not even halfway good enough. But she has no more time to waste trying to make herself look like some perfect imitation of herself. She has spent entirely too much of her life on that already.

She leaves her chambers with her shoulders back and her head held high. The lines are still there, the quirk of her lips remains, and there is nothing to be done about her pallour, but she stands and she strides and she looks like the queen she is.

It’s the most she can hope for, given the circumstances, and if her lady-in-waiting notes her complexion when they pass on the stairs, she has the good sense not to remark on it. A slight tightening of her mouth, a flicker of worry that is rather more touching than it has any reason be, and she steps aside with a murmured, “Highness.”

Alianor is tempted to touch her shoulder, to offer a greeting or a shaky ‘thank you’, but she refrains; if she speaks, she will shatter, and she cannot allow that to happen.

And so she does what she must: brushes past without even a word of acknowledgement, swallowing the sentiment as she’s been raised to do, and hopes that she’s keeping on the right side of the line between formal and rude.

It is so hard to tell sometimes, when her heart wants one thing but her status insists on another. It is so hard to know, and all the more so when she is tired, when she is haggard and worn and haunted by the death of her—

No. She will not — she cannot — allow herself to say _friend_.

She’ll never make it out of this place if she does. She won’t make it to the bottom of stairs, much less—

No.

 _No_.

She drives the thought aside, draws a shuddering, desperate breath, and wills her body back into motion.

*

It is a different kind of duty that brings her down to the dungeon.

An emotional, sentimental sort of duty, or one as close to those things as she’s allowed to get. She does not owe anything to the poor woman languishing there, but her heart aches for the loss and injustice she has endured, and a part of her thinks it is a kindness to them both, to have some positive news come from all of this: that her son is alive, that he was protected and kept safe, and that it seems he was right all along.

She doesn’t expect to be welcomed, and indeed she is not.

The woman in the cell — Darya, her memory supplies, not just the boy’s mother but also Sir Tiuri’s widow — is no happier to see her now than she was the last time she paid her a visit. A lifetime ago now, before she left for the summit, with an offer of peace and protection, a gesture of understanding and empathy in the only way she was able to provide it. This, naturally, being dismissed out of hand with a cold, cryptic warning.

Alianor won’t admit that the woman’s words still trouble her. She certainly won’t admit that the feeling grows worse and worse with each passing hour.

“In the darkness that is coming,” Darya snarled at her, eyes glittering in the murk of the dungeon, “you will scarcely be able to protect yourself.”

Alianor wonders, given the woman’s unique connection to the boy, how much she knows without having to hear it. Is she already aware of what she’s come here to tell her? Does she already know — or at least suspect — that Prince Viridian is involved in the death of her husband, the bounty on her son’s head, the anguish rising up from the ground to swallow Dagonaut and its people whole?

She will find out soon enough.

This time, Alianor makes no overtures of peace or protection. They weren’t welcome last time, and she has no reason to assume they would be now.

Instead, she says, without introduction or preamble, “I bring news of your son.”

A safe opening, she thinks. He may not be at the forefront of her mind right now, but young Tiuri is surely at the centre of everything that’s happening; she cannot fathom why, and lacks the strength to try, but so it is and so here she is, with his mother. She may not be able to offer the joy or despair the poor woman is no doubt yearning for — _he is home_ or _he is dead_ , each a unique end to her nightmare — but she can at least keep her appraised of what little she knows.

In a place like this, designed a hundred generations ago to bleed the hope out of its prisoners, any news at all must surely be worth something.

Indeed, Darya straightens immediately, looking up with an earnestness that Alianor frankly envies. If only she could be so free with her own heart; if only she could remember what it feels like to hold it in her hand as this woman does now, raw and exposed and still beating, and never once spare a thought for how easily it could be crushed or shattered or stopped.

“What news?”

There is not an ounce of deference in her, not in her voice nor in her posture. Not an ounce of esteem or respect to be seen or heard; she speaks to her and looks at her as if she were any other unwelcome visitor, as if the queen of Dagonaut deserves no more attention than the guards standing stoic and silent outside.

Alianor will receive no ‘Highness’ or ‘Majesty’ from her, not even a cursory ‘madam’. No bow or curtsey, no simpering smile, no pretence of any kind. Even if she commanded it, she would find nothing here but defiance, hard eyes and a harder voice, anger that has nothing to do with her personally and everything to do with her power and its limits.

It is somewhat refreshing, in truth.

She takes a moment before speaking again. She can feel her balance shift, the ground tilting beneath her; she feels like she’s standing on a precipice, a knife-edge with oblivion on one side and war on the other. Reveal too much, and this poor woman will hate her even more than she already does... indeed, rightly so. Reveal too little, however, and she will sense the deception and perhaps grow wrathful.

The diplomats and rulers of Unauwen, she thinks, are not half so wise or dangerous as this angry, imprisoned Eviellan woman.

She holds on to that thought as she composes herself, breathing slowly and speaking slower still.

“One of my finest riders...” she starts, then stops. She will not sugar-coat this. “No. _The_ finest rider in all Dagonaut gave his life to protect your son.”

Darya’s expression doesn’t shift. If she feels anything at all, she hides it remarkably well; Alianor could stand to learn a thing or two from her about that. “I see.”

 _Do you,_ Alianor wonders, rather more bitterly than she should admit. _Do you really have the faintest idea of what that means?_

Aloud, she only says, “I thought you should know.” And breathes, and breathes, and breathes. “Whatever trouble your son has landed himself in, whatever machinations are at play that we don’t yet know about, I thought you might like to know that Ristridin believed in him. So much that he gave his life battling those who would do him harm.”

It is not the whole story, of course — that is for her alone, a headache for another day — but it is at least something. Enough that she expects a reaction. Any reaction, even a dismissal, but at least something. Confusion or gratitude, anger at the waste of life, acknowledgement of the weight of his sacrifice, of how irreplaceable the life that has been lost.

 _Something_.

But it seems that Sir Tiuri’s widow is as untouched by Sir Ristridin’s sacrifice as she is by Queen Alianor’s power, or lack thereof. Her expression remains cool: a frown crosses her brow for a fraction of a second, and then she grows hard again, as indifferent as if the news had touched on nothing more than the day’s weather.

“Is this supposed to bring me comfort?” she asks at last, utterly toneless.

Alianor is at a loss. “A great man is dead,” she says, barely able to temper her own anger. “Dagonaut will feel his loss for years to come. I will feel his loss, personally, for the rest of my life. And all of this for the sake of your son. All of this — more death, more bloodshed, more wretched destruction — so that he might live and remain free. Does this truly mean nothing to you?”

Darya regards her coolly. “It only confirms what I already knew: that he is innocent, that he was always innocent, and that his role in what’s coming is greater than your insignificant little mind can fathom.”

It is yet more of what passed between them last time: ominous warnings, cryptic and nonsensical and possibly veiling a threat. Alianor should pay them no heed; with her task here done, she should simply throw up her hands and leave the woman to her raving. She is already juggling a dozen political headaches, and more than a few personal ones, and this without wasting her day listening to threats and insults from a prisoner driven mad by grief.

She should turn around now and leave this blasted place. One of them, at least, should have the dignity to simply walk away.

And yet she does not.

“I am bound,” she says instead, clenching her teeth and cursing her own stubbornness. “You know this. You know how little I can do to protect your son: you commented on it yourself, the last time I visited you. In lieu of that protection, I thought it might ease a little of your worry to learn that Ristridin and his grey riders were able to...” Her breath catches, too sharp to blame on the airlessness of the prison or the lack of light; she ducks her head, shadowed by the hood of her cloak, and prays that Darya will not see her weakness. “...that they could do more for him than I could.”

When she trusts herself to look up again, she finds Darya’s eyes seeming to gleam, catching light where none exists.

Alianor recalls her last visit, the preternatural eeriness emanating from this strange Eviellan woman, the way she seemed to look not at her but through her. She was unsettled then, and she is unsettled again now, but this time she holds herself upright and does not lower her face again. She has suffered blow after blow since returning to Dagonaut — her home, supposedly, and her sanctuary — and there is so little left of her. She will not be cowed or made frightened by some dark words or veiled threats.

Not this time. Not when—

She can still remember the chill of the crypt, like this but somehow colder. The ice here is leeched from the blood of living, the despair and desolation of its prisoners; in the crypt it came from dignity in death. She feels frozen twice over, assaulted from both sides; having stared down the shadow of death there, she certainly will not be made small here by something so much simpler.

Still watching her, Darya’s expression softens a bit.

“You’ve changed much,” she muses. “Quite a feat, for a difference of two days.”

Alianor draws herself up. “Much has happened in those two days to change me.”

Darya has no idea just how true that is, and Alianor is not inclined to enlighten her.

She cannot know that Prince Viridian, the ruthless and blood-soaked conquerer who slaughtered her nation, may yet become consort — indeed, perhaps _king_ — of Dagonaut; she certainly cannot know that he is also the one behind the assault on her son.

She cannot know that those two truths struck two unique blows to Dagonaut’s queen, personal and political, the one immediately after the other. She cannot know that the world is tilting and turning beneath and all around her, that her own face is a stranger to her now, more and more every time she finds its reflection. She cannot know that this visit was wholly unplanned, that her queen — whether or not she will ever use the title, or even acknowledge it — should not even be in Dagonaut at all, much less here with her, that she and her wayward son are an exception, that this visit is a kindness, and one that may cost her more time than she has. She cannot know—

There is so much she cannot know. There is so much that no-one can know, and none more than an angry, prophetic Eviellan prisoner.

Let it be enough for her, Alianor thinks, that much has happened, and that it has changed her. That there is a world outside this cell, that it turns and turns and turns, dragging its people up and down with it, the lowest peasants and the highest queens all equally abused.

And perhaps it is enough, at that, because Darya is still staring at her with that strange, assessing look on her face, as close to softness as she ever seems to get. Certainly as close to it as she’s ever shown to Dagonaut’s queen.

“Perhaps,” she murmurs, almost to herself, “there is hope for you yet.”

It is not her place to say such things, of course, but Alianor declines to point this out.

“I’d like to think so, madam,” she says, with a condescending smile.

She expects that to be the end of it. An acknowledgement on both sides, a redrawing of boundaries that should never have existed in the first place, and a farewell that, while certainly not warm, would at least be less frigid than the last. She has given as much as she can, and for once that offering has been accepted; now, she will bow — one of them should, at least, and no matter if it be her — and politely take her leave. What more could this woman possibly want from her?

Something, apparently, for she holds up a hand before Alianor has even begun to move, signalling for her to stay where she is.

“A moment,” she says, and Alianor freezes in place, as though in the grip of some unseen power.

“I...” She works her jaw, trying without success to loosen it. “Of course. What can I...” She coughs, feeling a pressure in her chest that has nothing to do with the chill or the gloom of this place. “That is to say... as you know, my offer of protection still stands. Whether or not you think it will do any good, surely I can—”

“Be quiet.”

That is too far. Alianor will endure much disrespect from this woman, whose family has been so thoroughly wronged, but a command — and that is surely what it is, with no pretence of a request or suggestion — presumes too much. The line must be drawn somewhere, even by the most lenient ruler, and she will draw it here.

“You forget yourself,” she says, with soft vehemence. “I understand that you have suffered, but you cannot simply—”

“Be _quiet_.”

Alianor does not growl. It would be entirely unbecoming of a queen, even in a place as crude as this.

She does, however, glare. “What is the meaning of this?”

Darya says nothing for a long, intense moment. The softness is entirely gone from her now; she is staring at her as though in a trance, feverish and frenetic, like she is searching the lines on her face for some unspoken secret, like she can see straight through to her bones, her blood, to all the tiny, invisible things that make up her body.

It is excruciating, and terrifying, and it lasts so long that Alianor begins to wonder if she will die too, not with honour and dignity as Ristridin did on the battlefield, but here like this, in the thrall of a woman wrongfully imprisoned by one of her knights.

One of her—

No. Not true.

Fantumar is not hers, and has never been hers; indeed, he takes great pride in reminding her of the fact. Her father may have granted him the title, but even then his loyalty only reached as far as it served his own whims and fancies. She will not think of him as a knight of Dagonaut, and she will never, ever speak his name and the title as one.

What he has done with this — going above his equals and superiors, above Ristridin, above the queen, to lock this woman up under the most transparent pretences — would end the career of a lesser man. That he is all but untouchable, that he has spent decades making himself that way, so much that even the crown of Dagonaut cannot stay his hand...

It is just further proof, she supposes, of what Darya told her the last time she was here.

 _Your power means nothing_.

Apparently so. Because here she is again, powerless in more ways than even an Eviellan shaman could foresee. Powerless and helpless and utterly useless, unable to do anything but stand idle and watch as Dagonaut slips through her fingers, piece by piece, and into the waiting hands of Unauwen’s bloodthirsty conquerer. Powerless to stop it, powerless to control it, powerless to do anything at all. She can only bow and smile and hand herself and her nation over to the tyrant who killed one of its greatest heroes.

Little wonder this woman resents her. Little wonder if she despises her, detests her, _hates_ her. Of that, at least, she is certainly worthy.

Finally, after what feels like a lifetime of self-loathing and fear, Darya turns away.

“You risk dooming all of us,” she whispers, voice low and strangely shaky. “If you let the monster take you, he will take you _completely_.”

Alianor does not need to ask what ‘monster’ she’s referring to.

She doesn’t need to—

She ought to question how Darya knows, and yet she doesn’t.

She reels, feeling it right down to her soul, so much that there is no room inside her for anything else. There is nothing, it seems, but horror and dread and the bones of her corset digging into her ribs, stopping her breath, stopping her heart, stopping her—

It is a flashfire, heat igniting in her blood, burning her from within. A threat or a warning, perhaps something in between; whatever form Darya intended her words to take, friendly or dangerous, neither or both, Alianor feels all of them at once. The danger that she can’t escape, Viridian like a dark cloud swallowing the sky, and the threat of reprisal if she fails to do what is expected of her.

She sees herself as a sacrifice, a lamb bound to a stone between their two kingdoms, with Dagonaut on one side and Unauwen on the other, its prince eager for blood, its king soused and desperate to placate his fierce, hungry son. She sees Ristridin’s lifeless face, sees the horizon crested with riders, grey and red, sees blood soaking the fields; she sees it all, everything, but she can see no way out.

“I know that,” she rasps, speaking not to Darya but to her own fears. “I know what fate awaits me, but I have no choice. If I don’t agree to this union, Unauwen will turn on Dagonaut and take it anyway. Not as an ally, but as a conquest. We will be destroyed, and I...” She closes her eyes, unable to face Darya — no, to face _Eviellan_ — as she voices the terror she hasn’t been able to shake since the summit. “I won’t let my home fall to the same fate as yours. Surely you of all people must see that. Even if it means...”

Even if it means handing it over willingly.

Her hand, her crown. Her home, her life.

Her _people_.

It is not a path she would take if the choice were hers. But it’s not, nor has it ever been. Just as every other ‘choice’ she has made since ascending to the throne, it is an illusion, nothing more. They were all made for her, those ‘choices’, decided and delivered before her permission was ever asked, and this one is no different. Indeed, it is the crown of them all.

To surrender or be conquered? To be taken willingly or by force?

It is not a choice anyone should have to make, or to have made for them. But here it is just the same, standing in front of her, all draped in red and and black, poised to descend whether she is ready or not.

May the heavens forgive her, it is no choice at all.

Darya is staring at her again. Not studious this time, or intense, but cold and detached, just as she did the last time. Like she doesn’t see Alianor as a queen at all, hers or anyone else’s; like she doesn’t even see her as a person at all, only a small, shallow annoyance.

“You still don’t understand.” A sigh, then, as though she thinks herself foolish for ever having expected anything else. “You toy with the lives of thousands, and yet you have no idea...” As if taken by a kind of seizure, she lurches forward, gripping the bars of her cell so tightly the metal seems to warp; a trick of the light, no doubt, but it is still vividly unsettling. “He will take _you_ , you blind fool. Not _us_. He will take you and use you, and your end will be the end of us all.”

So far as Alianor can see, it is much the same thing. Certainly, it’s nothing she hasn’t thought of herself, a thousand times or more since she found out she would be married to Viridian and not his brother. Her name is Dagonaut’s, and her fate is shared, inextricably, with its people’s. This she has known for as long as she has been able to speak or think; this she has struggled to accept from the moment she learned that her life, her hand, and her crown were all tokens to be given away.

“I will protect my people,” she says firmly. “Whatever happens to me personally, I will protect Dagonaut and its people with everything I have and everything I am. I swear to you, I—”

“You won’t be able to!” The anger pierces her chest, a blast of passion and power that drives her backwards. “Have you even heard a single word I’ve said? You are _powerless_. Save yourself, and you save all of us. But apparently you lack the self-preservation to even do that. And so you doom us all, with your pride and your arrogance, so certain that you’re offering us ‘protection’ while in truth you’re throwing us all into the fire.”

It is an infectious thing, anger. Alianor feels the heat rise to her face, no small accomplishment in a place as cold as this, and it takes all the strength she has to keep it from overpowering her completely. She closes her eyes, lets Ristridin’s voice echo inside her head, and uses his lessons to ground her, just as she promised him she would, back in the crypt when she foolishly believed that his loss would be the worst blow she would suffer today.

 _Temper your temper, young Majesty_ , he told her, and for his sake she does.

“What would you have me do?” she demands of Darya. “I can’t simply—”

“ _Run_.” Said automatically, a razor-edge of power and precision, as if the word were such a fundamental part of her being that she can fathom no other. “If you care at all for the people you’re sworn to protect, you will run and never look back. To take any other path — especially the one you are charging towards now, so blind and so proud — will only end in disaster.”

Alianor wants to laugh, and she wants to cry. She doesn’t need this woman or anyone else to tell her that no good can come of her marriage to Prince Viridian. But to turn her back on her duty, her people, her home? To turn her back on everything she is and everything she’s bound to, simply because the outcome is not the one she’d hoped for?

“You know I can’t do that.” She sounds much more confident than she feels. A trick, she’s sure, of the poor sound quality in this awful, echoey dungeon; certainly, it is not by her own talent. “Your son may be able to run off to the ends of the world when he lands himself in trouble, but the queen of Dagonaut doesn’t have the same luxury. I have a duty to protect and care for the people of Dagonaut, and I will not abandon them. No matter how difficult or painful the path ahead may be.”

Darya’s eyes seem to blaze brighter. “You fool. You doom everyone, and yourself most of all. Do you have any idea—”

“I know my duty.” Firm now, and strong, bordering on haughty. She is the ruler here, she reminds herself, and Darya just a prisoner; she must hold fast to that truth, lest she drown down here without it. “I thank you for your counsel, and I will do everything within my power to ensure that what you say won’t come to pass, but I will not turn my back on what needs to be done. No matter the consequences, or the personal cost.”

It is easier now to speak with conviction, with the memory of how much has already been lost, and how much may still be. Young Tiuri, still out there, heaven only knows where, fleeing for his life for reasons she can only guess at. Framed for the death of his father, a transparent ruse so that his enemies might kill him in the name of justice. And Ristridin, who saw through it, who gave up his life to ensure that the boy remained free.

Alianor owes it to Ristridin, to ensure in turn that his sacrifice not be in vain. And she owes it to young Tiuri as well, to keep him safe from cut-throats like Fantumar.

And, indeed, from monsters like Prince Viridian.

That she cannot protect herself from falling to the same fate is of no consequence. She will do what she must, and she will not allow herself to be swayed by some veiled portent of doom from a prisoner.

She turns away, then, because she has to, because she can’t be pulled any further into this nonsense. Self-doubt is a natural plague for someone in her position; experience — and Ristridin — have taught her not to dwell on it for longer than is absolutely necessary. Question, certainly, and wonder, but do not stray from a chosen path once it’s been decided. Even if that decision came against her will.

 _Especially_ if it came against her will.

She cannot falter now. For her own sake, for Dagonaut’s, for the sake of everyone and everything she holds dear. She must give the illusion of strength, must wear her confidence like a dress, like a crown, must give the illusion of believing that her path is the right one. 

Another illusion, one more among so many. But such is her life, and such are the choices made for her. She must live with them, and bear them alone. There is nothing else to be done, or said, and no reason to linger here.

“I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” she says to Darya. Rather more politely than the woman deserves, given the circumstances. “I’ll be leaving Dagonaut again very soon, but I want you to know that my offer of protection still stands. No matter our differences, no matter your personal feelings about me. Say the word, and it’s yours.”

“If that meant anything,” Darya retorts coldly, “I’m sure I’d be greatly comforted.”

It is no less than Alianor expected. Still, she tried; at least she can leave this place knowing she did that. She allows herself a moment’s regret, then steadies herself again, matching the woman’s hardness with her own.

“I strongly advise you to think on it,” she says, taking a last long look around. “I imagine you have plenty of time for reflection in a place like this.”

To her surprise, Darya chuckles. “So you do have teeth.”

Alianor meets her eye, and does not flinch. “I have a great many things you assume I lack.”

“Good.” A flash of steel, in her eyes and in the word. “You’ll need them.”

And with that final warning — or threat — she retreats to the darkest corner of the cell and doesn’t look back.

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

Alianor doesn’t want to admit that she’s shaken, but she is.

Darya’s words stay with her, the silence that followed even more so. The dark and dank of the dungeon, the chill and the gloom and the misery, cling to her like an ill-fitting cloak; no matter what she does, no matter how hard she tries to distract herself, she can’t seem to shake it off.

She blames it on her exhaustion. She blames the fact that she is already shaken from everything she’s learned since returning to Dagonaut. She is already frayed and ragged, and she was at her wits’ end long before she made the foolish mistake of visiting Darya in her cell; is it any wonder that she would feel shaken afterwards? A stupid lapse in judgement, exactly the kind of fool’s sentiment that her father would have knocked out of her years ago. If he were here, she has no doubt he would have her soundly thrashed for giving in to it now.

If _Ristridin_ were here...

Only fractionally more gentle, she suspects. She can almost hear his voice, a maudlin echo in her mind: “What in the world did you hope to achieve, girl, by going back down there?”

She couldn’t tell him.

She doesn’t even really know the answer herself. Only that it felt like the right thing to do, given the boy’s unfortunate circumstance, to keep his mother appraised, to pass on what little information she had about him. Doesn’t every mother have the right to know that her son is alive and well?

That she tried to keep certain parts of the situation to herself was, apparently, irrelevant. After their last encounter, Darya’s seemingly impossible foreknowledge shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Nothing should, she supposes. After the events of the last day, she should be surprised by nothing any more. And yet...

“Ready my horse,” she tells her escort, waiting dutifully at the palace gates where she dismounted. “I’ll join you shortly, and then we’ll ride.”

Their response — a synchronous bow, salute, and “right away, your Majesty!” — bring herback to herself, just a little.

It’s enough, at least, to keep her legs under her as she climbs the stairs back to her chambers. Her cloak feels like it’s made of lead, a weight on her shoulders that cords with tension and gives her a headache; her gait is slow and clumsy, and she fails quite spectacularly at keeping the hem of her skirts out from under her dragging feet. It is a shameful display, unbecoming of anyone at all, let alone the queen of a nation. 

At least, it would be if there was anyone around to see it.

The palace, however, is almost totally empty, only a few wandering servants close enough to see her pass, and they duck their heads so fast she doubts they catch so much as a glimpse of her humiliation.

Back in the supposed privacy of her chambers, however, she finds herself rather less fortunate.

She has only a moment to herself, if even that long. A moment spent glaring at her reflection in the mirror, studying the lines on her face, willing them away to no avail. She looks wretched, she looks tired, she looks ill. She looks—

She looks exactly as miserable as she feels. And that is simply not good enough.

Prince Viridian, when she arrives at his camp after another endless ride, will expect his future bride — no, his _reward_ — to stand before him in the most pristine condition. Perfumed and perfect, he will expect a trophy befitting the greatest conquerer in a thousand years. If his father’s boasting is to be believed, he has earned it.

Alianor’s feelings on that subject are, naturally, of no consequence.

But her duty is clear. Whether or not she wants him, whether or not he wants her, the match is expected, and so she must do what she can to ensure their first meeting goes well.

So she preens and primps, practices and prepares. She rearranges her features until they’re smoother than the glass that reflects them, and she rehearses her smiles until they’re seamlessly radiant, until the only ones who would see the cracks are herself and those who know her best.

Thankfully, all but one of those are now dead.

The one...

The one: her lady-in-waiting.

A breath of fresh air, and sometimes a lash of cold wind. Today, she is a little of both. Blessedly shielded from all things political or dramatic, she storms through the door like a human-sized hurricane, tutting and shaking her head.

“Your Highness!”

Alianor’s unwitting shame turns her reflection a darker shade of pink. It is the healthiest she’s looked all morning.

“I’m leaving in just a moment,” she says, as firmly as she can. Which, when faced with the woman who all but raised her, is not very. “I only came back here to fix my appearance a little.”

 _To fix the damage,_ she means. _To undo the mess I made of myself by coming home to such endlessly dire news._

She can’t say any of that, of course, but she suspects her lady hears it even so. She knows her far, far too well.

“If I may say so, your Highness,” she says, in a tone that makes it quite clear she’s going to say it regardless, “it’s going to take a damn sight more than brooding in front of the mirror to put right that blasted mess.”

No-one else in all Dagonaut, not even Ristridin, could get away with saying such a thing.

But this woman has known Alianor for almost a lifetime. She has seen her at her worst, held her through moments that no-one else may ever know about, and she alone has earned the right to speak to her with absolute, unchecked honesty.

Even when that honesty is the last thing in the world she wants to hear.

Feeling entirely too much like the pouting, petulant princes she once was, Alianor turns away from the mirror.

“What I can manage will have to suffice,” she grumbles. “I don’t have time to waste.”

“I’ll wager not.” The words are soft, and so are her eyes. She has always been so good at that, at recognising when to be sharp and when to be gentle, when her stubborn, stupid queen can’t endure another moment of one or the other. “Come, now. Hold still and let me...”

And she closes the space between them in what seems like a single step, spins her so-called ‘Highness’ around like a disobedient puppy, and starts tugging on her hair.

Alianor’s protestations are as weak as her body.

“I don’t have time for this.” Again, and again, weaker and weaker each time she repeats it. The hoarseness of her voice is a humiliation she can ill afford, but her lady is long used to such things and makes a fine pretence of not hearing it. “It was a mistake returning at all, and now I’m running late. I need to leave now, if I’m going to make this wretched meeting with—”

She stops, nails digging into her palms as she clamps down on the urge to cover her mouth.

Too little, too late. Here, in this room where she should be safe, she has already been seen.

She sees her lady’s reaction, reflected in the mirror. A tightening of the jaw, a flash behind the eyes, confusion swiftly followed by comprehension. Perhaps she doesn’t realise her features are just as visible as her queen’s; perhaps she simply doesn’t care. They’ve never had much in the way of airs between them, and her lady-in-waiting is exactly as pushy as one must be, to raise a headstrong, temperamental young princess into a powerful, dignified young monarch.

Her success was moderate at best, even with Ristridin’s aid. Alianor makes a good show at dignity when her mind is in the right place, and she can toy with poise and grace when needed, but there is certainly room for improvement in almost every corner. Not that she can blame her lady for that, or Ristridin: the fault lies solidly with herself, not with those who tried — and tried and tried and _tried_ — to make her ready for this.

She does what she can. To her detriment sometimes, to be sure, but never to theirs. Never to Dagonaut’s. They at least raised her well enough to never, ever do that. She may well be a disappointment to them in some ways — or she may not; she doesn’t know, and would never have the courage to ask — but at least she will never disappoint in that: her life, as she has known for as long as she can remember, belongs to her nation and its people. She will drive herself to an early, tragic grave before she ever lets herself forget that.

The way today is going, she may yet have to.

Behind her, and in front of her, in reverse, a sigh from her lady. “Another meeting with King Favian?”

It is a loaded question, heavy and dangerous.

Had it come from anyone else, Alianor might ignore it. She might even warn her to hold her tongue, and be well within her rights as queen to do so. But for all her scowling and sullenness, for all her stubbornness and ill-tempered temper, she has never been able to reprimand her lady-in-waiting, no more than she was ever able to reprimand Ristridin when he would chide her for some minor slip or another. Perhaps she should have; perhaps, if she’d shown him a firmer hand when she became his queen, he wouldn’t have been so wretchedly reckless, wouldn’t have thrown his own life away for the sake of a—

A boy. A young man, barely sixteen. Eager and willing, only two days earlier, to offer up his own life in service of Dagonaut.

It is wrong of her to blame Tiuri for the destruction he has unwittingly wrought. It is wrong of her to think cruelly of a young man — a _boy_ — just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ristridin surely wouldn’t blame Tiuri for what happened, and neither should his queen. He would have been perfectly happy to take up arms in service to her, had he completed the trials. Should he ever get the chance again, she needs to be worthy.

And yet, in her weariness, it is more than she can do not to think, _if he’d only sat the vigil as he should..._

A useless thought, and one that Ristridin would rightly chide her for, if he were still with her. What good can possibly come from blaming a boy who isn’t even here to defend himself? More, what good can come of her wringing her hands in frustration over events that have already come and gone? It serves nobody, thinking of Tiuri now; when the boy returns home and it is once more within her power to deal with him, she will no doubt spend a great deal of time grappling with her feelings on the matter. Until then, however, it is a waste of thought and strength, a waste that she definitely can’t afford.

She closes her eyes, just for a moment, then refocuses on the present.

The present: her lady’s hands in her hair, pulling loose the braids and reknotting them with firm, controlled kindness. They’ve been through this routine a thousand times, a hundred thousand, sometimes several times in a single day. It is exhausting, being a queen, and all the more so being the daughter of a king, knowing as well as she does that he never had to worry about such things. And not only him, but all kings everywhere, so it seems.

King Favian, who drinks and belches like those things are a mark of virility. Iridian, his pretty, puffed-up flower-petal of an heir, charming and witless and utterly naive, who need only touch a hand to his sword to be the perfect picture of gallantry.

Gallantry in a king, or just a future king, is a sign of greatness.

In a queen, it is unseemly, unsightly. Worse, it is _unattractive_.

It was Ristridin who suggested that she hang up her sword, her knife, her bow, that she put away her cherished hunting tools before she was crowned and not take them out until she had already won the love of her people.

Her lady-in-waiting, who had never understood such behaviour, had actually smiled that day. It had balmed a little of the sacrifice, to have earned a rare gleam of approval from her.

That is certainly not the case now. Neither of them are smiling today, and Alianor recalls the question — _another meeting with King Favian?_ — and wishes with all her heart that it was only he and his noxious belching waiting for her over the horizon.

She thinks of lying. Wants to, even, and let herself imagine for a moment that the lie is the truth.

But alas, lying has never been a talent of hers, for all her gift in hiding other things, and even if it were, the woman behind and in front of her knows her far too well to ever be fooled.

She sighs, resigns herself to the truth, and to admitting it.

“No,” she answers at last, with tongue-bitten reluctance. “I’m not meeting with Favian.” No title; it is intentional, and will most certainly be noted for the sign of disrespect it is. “I’m meeting with his son.”

Almost imperceptible, her lady’s lips quirk. If any proof were needed that she does not grasp the situation, this would surely be it.

“Crown Prince Iridian?” She manages to suppress the smile, but the gleam in her eyes, gentle but amused, speaks volumes. “Well, that certainly explains the need to give a good impression, hm?”

“No.” For once, Alianor doesn’t bother trying to hide her flash of displeasure; she couldn’t, even if she wanted to. “It seems there’s been a... change in King Favian’s plans. Apparently, Crown Prince Iridian has no need for a second throne.”

She says no more. She doesn’t need to.

In the mirror, the teasing light in her lady’s eyes sputters and fades. “Surely you don’t mean—”

“—the returning conqueror?” Her jaw clenches; she can’t even begin to loosen it. “I’m afraid so.”

It is, perhaps, rather less politically correct than it should be, but for once she finds she doesn’t care. In the back of her mind she hears Ristridin’s voice, gentle and firm at the same time, telling her to temper her temper; for the first time in her life, she tells him to shut up. Her wrath is earned; indeed, it’s the only thing keeping her on her feet right now, and she will not surrender such a precious and powerful thing in the moment it is most needed.

“Prince Viridian.” The name rings hollow, lacking respect. Even her lady has little love for the great Unauwen victor. Alianor finds she cannot chasten her for it, though perhaps she ought to. “I see.”

“No. You don’t.” Frustrated, she wrenches away from the mirror, away from her lady’s patient, careful hands, away from this ridiculous game of appearances and illusions and stupidity. “Nor should you. This is my burden to bear, my sacrifice to make. It’s not for you, or anyone else, to understand or offer suggestions or do anything at all. That the situation is more complicated now than it was when I first agreed to it makes no difference.”

“Surely it makes all the difference.” Her voice is trembling, and understandably so. “Sir Ristridin—”

“—made his sacrifice in the name of duty, and in the name of Dagonaut. As I must now make mine.”

Silence, then, as heavy as a nation upon her back.

Alianor paces the room, agitated and angry and unable to hold her body still. It was so much easier to keep her frustration inside before she gave the words power by speaking them aloud. Now they’re out, they’ve become vividly, viscerally real; they are _true_ , and that means she can no longer hide from them. No more cowering behind ‘not yet’ and ‘what if’ and ‘perhaps’.

Now, as before in the dungeon with Darya, those chilling words still scratching at the walls of her mind, the reality of the situation has grown fangs and claws, and it is hungry.

She wishes there was less truth in it, wishes she could still cower like a child behind the delusion that one marriage is no different from another. She wishes she could turn to her lady-in-waiting, or to Ristridin’s lone surviving companion, or to one of the riders who accompanied her back here, loyal and unquestioning; she wishes she could ask any or all of them to guide and comfort her as they might have done if it had been her father wearing the crown. She wishes she could admit her true, honest feelings, just once: that her heart is broken from the loss of a friend and mentor, that she does not want to marry a tyrant and a conquerer, that she wants to—

She wants to–

Her lady, seeming to hear her heartbeat as only one who knows her so well could, asks, very quietly, “Have you wept for him?”

Alianor straightens her spine until it feels ready to crack. “You know I can’t do that.” Her voice is in pieces, a too-close echo of her heart. “I have too much still to do. I...”

But she cannot sustain the illusion any more; the sentence dies, lost to the cracks and fractures where salt and water well up, ready to spill.

Her lady crosses to her side. Unsummoned, unbidden, but never, ever unwanted. “Queen Alianor.”

“Don’t.” Ragged now, the lash of a whip. An illusory weapon, of course, but it’s the only kind she’s allowed to wield. “Don’t call me that. Not now. You know I can’t...”

_You know I can’t bear it. You know I’ll break down if I hear my name said like that, by you, now. You know—_

But of course she does. She knows it just as she knows her: with a lifetime’s worth of intimacy.

That’s precisely why she said it. Because she knows, because she understands more than any servant ever should — and that, of course, is another failing of her queen, of Alianor, to allow such dreadful things to fall on a servant’s shoulders, to allow her to share even the smallest part of her burden, her responsibility, her life — and because she cares for her too, as deeply and as loyally as Ristridin ever did.

And that—

That is a blow. And it is a comfort, too. It is a burst of pain both sweet and brutal, so much of both that she cannot endure it.

Her hands clench into fists at her sides. Her breath comes in sharp, heaving gasps, so violent that her corset threatens to split apart, leaving her ribs and her heart exposed. She wants to lash out, she wants to shout, to scream, she wants—

Her lady takes her by the hand — by the _fist_ , trembling and powerful and weak — and leads her to the bed.

“He’d be the first to tell you,” she says, sitting her down with a familiar sigh and a familiar _tsk_ , “there’s no shame in shedding tears for those who deserve them. There is no shame in mourning him, Highness.”

She sits down too, quiet and respectful, leaving about two hand-spaces between them. The distance feels so vast, and yet it’s not nearly enough.

“I’m not ashamed,” Alianor rasps, a lie that fools no-one. Eyes closed, breathing ragged. She will not weep, she _cannot_ weep. Not now, not yet. “I have too much to do. I can’t afford the distraction. If I let myself think of him, if I let myself mourn him, I’ll never leave this room, much less Dagonaut. I’ll never meet with Viridian, and he and his drunken lout of a father will burn us all to the ground, and I can’t... I can’t afford to waste my strength on something I can’t change. Not when there is still so much that I can.”

Her lady sighs, and tugs once more on her hair. Futile, of course, to try and tame it without the proper tools, but Alianor gets the feeling that’s not what she’s trying to do. The motion is rhythmic, soothing, meant to tame not the hair but the scalp, and the racing, aching mind beneath.

It feels good. Too good, in truth. She can’t—

“Always so stubborn.” The words are a balm and a bruise all at once; they tug at the nape of her neck, leaving her sore. “You can’t change anything in your present state, and you know it.”

The impertinence is a hard blow.

The fact that it also happens to be true...

That should make no difference.

Alianor turns. She looks up at her devoted, dedicated servant with the blurry, half-blind eyes of the young princess she used to be, what feels like a thousand years ago now. She wants to chasten her for being so presumptuous, to bark out a reprimand, make it clear that she won’t be spoken to in such a way, not by anyone. She wants to become the queen that she needs to be, the powerful sovereign who will soon face Viridian and set down her own terms. She wants to command, to demand, to create some kind of order somewhere in all this madness, but she can’t, she can’t, she—

She is so _tired_.

Her fingers hurt, balled into fists that won’t unclench. Her jaw aches from the strain of keeping it locked, the strain of swallowing her feelings and biting down on her tongue. Her throat is razed with all the words she’s not allowed to say, all the pain lodging itself in the space between breath and sound.

It is _exhausting_ , holding herself together like that, damming all the holes where grief wants to pour through, salt-stained and wet and helpless. Her corset is brutally tight, but it’s not tight enough to stop the sudden heaving of her chest, the gasps that burst out of her, the whimpers, the _sobs_ —

And her lady-in-waiting, who has known her for longer than even Ristridin did, breaks more than a dozen rules of etiquette by leaning in and pulling the queen of Dagonaut into her arms.

“He was a great man,” she whispers, pressing the words like precious secrets to the crown of Alianor’s head. “He deserves to be mourned. And you, your Majesty, deserve to mourn him.”

Such a stupid word, ‘majesty’, and all the more so when she is like this, shaking and shuddering, soaking her silks with salt and sorrow, sobbing when she should be standing still and stoic and strong.

There is nothing majestic in this. There is certainly nothing majestic in her.

It is unbecoming of a queen to weep and wail like this, to mourn even the most deserving of men or women, even the very best of them all. It is unbecoming of her, personally, who was not allowed to weep for her own father, who instead had to stand up in front of his subjects — _her_ subjects — and claim the crown before his body was even cold, smile and say that she was now Dagonaut’s protector, smile without a tear on her face and promise—

Perhaps it’s not only Ristridin she weeps for now.

Perhaps...

She pulls away, aching in every last part of herself.

“Dagonaut is my home,” she croaks, feeling its weight on her sore, stiff, shaking shoulders. “I have to take care of it.”

Her lady smiles. It is one of the softest smiles Alianor has ever seen, and one of the saddest.

“Dagonaut is your home,” she says, with devastating tenderness. “Just this once, your Majesty, let it take care of you.”

*

She lingers much longer than she planned, and much longer than she should.

This as a matter of necessity: by the time the grief is fully out of her, eyes left swollen and sore, the shudders slowed until they finally, finally stop, the exhaustion is so great she can no longer stave it off.

She sleeps.

No: she all but passes out, eased onto her back by her lady-in-waiting and swaddled in blankets like a newborn, and there she remains until the sun is already well beyond its zenith.

Her dreams are feverish and fraught, a sure sign that she has evaded rest for much too long.

She sees fields, once green and yellow, now burned black and drenched red. She sees the blood of good men and women soaking everything — first Eviellan, then Dagonaut — and all the while King Favian’s youngest son stands over the bodies and screams for more. He is blood-soaked as well, his armour and his sword, even his face, and when he sees her and raises his hands they are black with the stuff.

She recoils rather than approach him. A step backwards, and another, and his features twist into something gruesome, something unrecognisable.

“No-one is safe,” he snarls, in a voice dripping with malice. “And you least of all. You think you can hide from me? You think you can _run_?”

The word echoes, the distant tolling of a bell: a marriage, or perhaps a funeral.

She tries to turn her face away, horrified and afraid for her life, but he won’t allow it; he will allow nothing, it seems, unless he has ordered it himself.

The cold sting of steel bites into her cheek as he draws his sword, a smear of blood painting her more thickly than any rouge, any powder, any mask.

“Face me,” he says. “Face me, and tremble.”

And he angles his sword up, bringing her with it, until she has no choice but to raise her head and her eyes, and look into deep into his.

She expects to see her own reflection, as bloody and beaten as the surrounding landscape, but she doesn’t.

Instead, she sees nothing at all. A void of the darkest, most impossible black. Starless, moonless, sunless; it seems to swallow everything, devouring even her.

She tries, again, to look away.

She tries to run, to flee, to do as she was once told to do; she can’t remember when or why, but she feels it in her bones, her blood, her everything. She tries to move, only to move, but she can’t even do that. She is paralysed, frozen, _trapped_ —

“Kneel,” Viridian commands, and as her body yields and obeys, the world around her follows suit and bleeds out to black.

*

She wakes, unsettled, uneasy, and wholly unrested.

Her lady, watching over her, sees this immediately. Alianor would expect no less, but it still makes her bristle when she asks, with all the best intentions in the world, “Bad dreams, your Highness?”

She shakes her head, entirely too quickly to be convincing. She has poured out enough brutal honesty for one day; her eyes are still sore from it. Now she must rise and don her illusion once more.

“No,” she says, setting the mask in place. “Just eager to be on my way. I’ve lingered here too long already.”

If she sees the lie — and she most assuredly does — her lady knows better this time than to try and push her.

“Your horse is saddled and watered,” she says instead, with all the smoothness of a lifetime serving a serrated, stubborn princess. “I took the liberty of packing some food for your journey. The heavens know, you barely eat when I’m there to sit you down and insist on it. I shudder to think how you fare during these ‘affairs of state’ you keep running off to.”

Said with a sneer, of course, albeit an affectionate one.

There is much Alianor could say about that. The sneer, yes, but the larger remark as well. She could remind her dear servant, for example, of the challenges involved in maintaining any kind of appetite when an entire nation — or, indeed, two, as at the summit — sits by and watches her with their mouths hanging open, riveted by what their queen chooses to eat or decline.

She could remind her, also, of the pressures of her duties, the difficulty in finding enough time to eat anything at all, whether or not she has any appetite that day, whether or not there’s someone there to insist or encourage or care. Her needs matter little, her desires far less; just one more of the many gifts that come with the crown.

She says none of this, of course. Not least of all because she sees through the words to their deeper, softer meaning: the empathy that cannot be acknowledged by either of them, the compassion and caring that can only be shown through needless, superficial fretting. Her lady-in-waiting may not be her mother in truth, but she raised her well enough and she clucks and tuts over her like a frustrated parent even with no cause. That she is clucking and tutting now — that she is _fretting_ , superficially or otherwise — speaks more to her heart than it does to Alianor’s eating habits.

Thus, with the barest ghost of a smile, she only says, “I appreciate the thought.”

She appreciates far more than that, of course, but the thought is safe and simple.

“If you really appreciated it,” her lady counters, forgetting her place, “you’d find a way to tell those Unauwen upstarts where to go.”

Alianor winces. “You know I can’t do that. You know I—”

“Yes, yes, of course I do. Heaven knows, you go on about it often enough.” A sigh, heavy and deep enough that it chases away some of the room’s warmth. “Politics and all that.”

“Indeed.” She suppresses a shudder. “Politics.”

Reminded again of Favian’s condescension at the summit, the word tastes sour and toxic, like it’s been steeped in liquor and then left to rot. Like she will be, quite probably, languishing in his son’s bed while he carves up Dagonaut to make it fit in his trophy room.

“Our lives are politics,” Favian said, looking down at her like she was nothing more than a bargaining chip, a crown unfortunate enough to still have a head attached. “Our marriages are politics... and this is good politics.”

Excellent politics, in fact. For Unauwen.

More and more, Alianor is coming to realise how poorly Dagonaut stands to come out of it. Herself too, but that is of no consequence; it is Dagonaut she must fight for. 

That is why it’s so important it is that she attend this meeting with Viridian on her own terms, that she at least try to make a better bargain out of this wretched match, to make a union, if she can, that is ‘good politics’ for her nation as well as his.

She owes her people that much, and more besides. Whatever ambitions and aspirations Viridian may have, it is Alianor’s duty to temper them, just as Ristridin once taught her to temper herself.

She can’t do that if she won’t even meet him.

Personal preferences be damned, as Favian says. Darya’s warnings be damned, as well. Her own dreams and visions, her own stupid hopes be damned. There is no way around it, and she shouldn’t waste what little strength she has in trying to find one. Her power may mean nothing, but she still holds close the illusion of it. That must count for something in the eyes of a conquerer, or the tyrant who would hunt down a mere boy for reasons still unknown and slaughter anyone who stands in his way.

Viridian doesn’t need to know how weak her position is. And she, who has spent her life learning how to smile and sigh and frown on cue, who has spent her life learning to give the appearance of power, whether or not it is really there... she, who was raised for precisely this purpose, is in a better position than anyone to protect her home and her people from such a wild and hungry beast as him.

Let him take her if he wants, whatever Darya may say. Let him do with her as he likes.

But she will die on his sword before she lets him spill another drop of Dagonaut’s blood.

*

She reunites with her horse and her escort with a renewed strength.

No: a renewed determination.

It is not the same thing, however desperately she may wish it was.

Despite her best efforts, and those of her servants, there is no strength in her. Her body is still protesting its mistreatment, headaches and stiff joints and a dozen other myriad complaints, the bone-digging tightness of her corset an ever-present pressure on her lungs and heart.

These things, she knows well; the aftermath of a night-long ride, the strain of anticipation that comes with an unwanted meeting, the certainty of giving away more than she would like. These are normal, and so long as she keeps her mind clear of Darya’s warnings and visions of Ristridin’s lifeless face, she can will herself into believing the day ahead of her will end just like any other.

She always knew it would come. Even before she was queen, it was assumed that she would one day marry a prince of Unauwen. This meeting is just that knowledge coming to fruition, and the marriage that will follow its inevitable culmination. Whatever else she may know or think of the man himself is wholly irrelevant. As his father observed so shrewdly, this is politics. No more, no less.

So she tells herself, anyway. 

The delusion is enough to keep her standing, at least, and empowers her to find a smile for her escort, the same two riders who brought her home safely from the summit.

They are more serious now than they were before, faces drawn with sorrow; no doubt they’ve heard the news about Ristridin’s demise. 

Were she anyone else, Alianor might share her own grief, might offer a word or two of comfort, of empathy, of warmth. She would touch their shoulders or their arms, and speak fondly of the man who so enriched all their lives. She would do much, and indeed she wants to, but of course she can’t.

“Are you rested?” she asks instead, keeping her voice clipped and steady, as it must be if she is to survive this. “I want to leave as swiftly as possible.”

The riders exchange a glance. It is fleeting, but telling: she is not masking herself as well as she hoped. She clenches her teeth, bites her tongue, and pretends she didn’t see.

“Of course, your Majesty,” one of them says, after a pregnant beat. “We ride on your order.”

She leans in to study him, finding his eyes through the slit in his helmet and holding them, and it is only when she opens her mouth to speak again that she realises she can’t recall which one of them he is. Was it he who spoke so fondly of men and their horses? Was it he who jokingly suggested some ‘catastrophe’ to keep them in Dagonaut indefinitely? She has no idea. She can’t even recall if those two were the same man or not.

She hates herself for that. Has her view of the world truly become so narrow?

No. She knows this, of course, at least objectively. With everything that’s happened since their return, it feels like a lifetime since they left the summit; time, sorrow, and exhaustion have taken a heavy toll and she feels a thousand years older now than she did the last time they stood side-by-side and smiled at each other. A thousand sunrises, a thousand breakfasts, a thousand unwanted meetings.

She can scarcely fathom that it has only been a couple of hours.

Her horse, pawing restlessly at the ground, is happy to see her.

He alone seems completely untouched by what has transpired here, as eager to be back out in the world as he was at the summit, bound and tethered and eager to run. He is a free spirit, a wild creature, much like she was when she learned to ride him: the temperamental little princess with the whole world spread out in front of her, never mind that one day it would be beneath her feet.

She had no perspective then, no idea of what it meant to become queen, the unimaginable weight of the crown that would soon be hers.

The world is spread out in front of her again now, but this time she would give anything to keep from having to venture back out into it.

Still, somewhat in spite of herself, she feels a little of that wildness rise up in her again when she mounts up and settles astride her wild, free-spirited companion. She can feel his impatience, his eagerness to be back out there among the trees and grasses, and despite her best efforts to stay grounded, to keep always in mind the seriousness of what is coming, still a little of that free spirit spills into her as well. How can it not, she thinks, patting his neck, when he is so thoroughly alive with it?

She lets the feeling settle, a thrum of warmth and light beneath her skin. She’s going to need all the wildness she can get, if she is to survive this meeting with one far wilder and not nearly so easy to tame.

The horse, at least, is content to be commanded. Digging her heels into his flank, feeling him respond with readiness and hunger, gives her the illusion that she can control other things as well: the turn of this vast political tide, her place in its centre, even the great sweeping ambitions of Unauwen, high on its victory and ravenous for more. It’s only an illusion, of course, nothing more, but it bolsters her just the same. 

It is a strange sensation. She has lived her whole life wrapped up in illusions just like this, strengthening and encouraging her people by making them believe that she holds more power than she does. She never fully understood, not until this moment, how important such illusions can be, and how real the comfort they give.

She only hopes the same will be true in reverse, when she meets with Viridian. Will it be enough to carry the illusion of power and confidence, if she can’t even look him in the eye without recalling her dream and quaking? Will a lifetime’s worth of learning and experience temper the rage she feels when she looks up at the man whose riders slaughtered Ristridin and his men? Is there any illusion powerful enough for that?

She hopes so. For all their sakes.

Beside her, mounted comfortably on his own steed, one of her riders lets out an impromptu, indecorous snort. “Still as docile as a kitten with you,” he remarks, cocking his head at her horse. “That is, uh, your Majesty.”

Ah, yes. This, she certainly remembers: the belatedness with her title, awkward and flushing behind his helmet.

She does not smile, but she lets the familiarity give her a little courage. Nudging the horse a little with her heel, then with her thigh, she feels his lean, powerful body respond, and that gives her more.

“I can’t imagine I’d ever call this wild fellow ‘docile’,” she replies, with as much warmth as she can manage. “No, I fear he just likes to pretend. To give the... illusion, shall we say, of grace and poise.” She thinks of Viridian, waiting in the distance among his soldiers, and she thinks of Ristridin too, and all the years he spent teaching her to rule with dignity. “As we all must, it seems.”

Beneath her, the horse nickers. A low sound, but gentle, somewhere between comforting and chiding. He always detests it when she’s off-balance; it makes him off-balance as well.

Her companion, recognising her sudden sobriety, swiftly grows more serious himself as well. He shifts in his saddle, turning sideways just enough to face her properly. He’s skimming the edges of politeness, just as she remembers he did during the inbound journey, but now, as then, he does not cross it.

“Your Majesty,” he says. Stronger now, and braver; the title rings with purpose. “Forgive the impropriety, but I... I though you might care to know that we — that is, both of us... no, _all_ of us — would gladly give up our lives in service to you, should the situation call for it. Just as Ristridin did.”

Alianor is not entirely convinced the nature of Ristridin’s sacrifice was quite so tender-hearted. This, of course, to his merit: it shouldn’t have been.

No doubt he wasn’t thinking of her at all when he threw himself on one of Viridian’s hired swords. No doubt she didn’t even cross his mind until the deed was already done, the life bleeding out of him, staining the grass just as it did in her awful dream. This, again, to his merit: knowing him as well as she does, there is no doubt in her mind that he was thinking only of poor innocent Tiuri, Darya’s son, too young to be caught up in such dreadful machinations.

So it should be.

“Ristridin was far too honourable for that, sire,” she says, as tactfully as she can. “He gave his life in service to Dagonaut. Not me.”

She wishes the distance between those things was greater. Dagonaut and its queen, the crown and the head that wears it.

It _should_ be greater. She should work to make it greater. It is unjust that her choices — indeed, her lack of choice, the choices others make in her name — should impact her people so completely, so inescapably. It should be her burden to bear alone, this unwanted marriage to a violent, tyrannical conquerer; what she does for politics should never affect the lives of her people.

And yet it does. As does her choice of dress, her choice of perfume, her choice of smile.

Her choice, at the summit, to look King Favian in his bleary, drunken eye, and _not_ smile.

There is so much she would change if she could. If she had the power, if she had the choice. If she had anything at all, any reason to be worthy of the eyes that look up at her—

The eyes that look up _to_ her.

They really, really shouldn’t.

Her horse whinnies again, louder and more insistent. He wants to ride, wants to fly through the grasslands and the forests, never mind the destination, never mind what awaits him or his mistress there. He wants his moment of freedom, of pretending that the saddle on his back and the bridle between his teeth are only there because he wants them, that he chooses to wear them. He is so much like her in that regard; how often does she convince herself that she wears this or that dress by choice, that she adorns her hair or her neck with this or that jewel because she likes it and not because it’s expected.

The crown too, perhaps. In her darker days.

Perhaps that’s the real reason they get along so well, she and her like-minded mount. Perhaps it’s not simply because they’ve known each other for so long, the wild young stallion and the wild young princess who learned to ride together. Perhaps it’s also that they have more in common with each other than others of their own kind.

A sobering thought, a little sharp; she could cut herself on it. A little comforting too, if she has the strength and wit to learn from him. His joy when he rides, the thrill of tearing up the ground with his hooves, unmindful of the destination. The journey is everything, all the world spread out in front of him, just as it was once in front of her. For him, strong and healthy and bound only by the saddle on his back and the body that would ride it — only her, never anyone else — it is enough simply to run. It is his purpose, his power, and it is his life. A field to run in and fresh water to drink; there is nothing else in the world he needs.

Alianor thinks again of Darya’s warning, of the word hissed in the dark, thick with venom and vehemence.

“ _Run_.”

She meant ‘away’. Alianor knows that, of course. But still, wrapping herself up in illusion, as she always does — as she always must, if she is to survive — she lets herself believe that she simply meant this: _run_ , wild and young and imagining herself free, and never think of where the journey will end.

Where it has to end.

Because she cannot run _away_. There is too much on her shoulders, her back, her head. She cannot journey so far, and she wouldn’t even if she could. She has duties, responsibilities, and people like the two man flanking her, their devotion visible through the slits in their helmets. She has _Dagonaut_ , the most beautiful and glorious of all nations, and the very thought of running away from it frightens her more than Prince Viridian ever will.

No, she will not run away. But with her horse beneath her and her riders beside her, she will run. Towards a future she doesn’t want and perhaps can’t change, but free, for now, to imagine she can.

It may not be enough. It certainly won’t stave off the storm that is coming. But she will find strength in what little she is still able to do, and she will propel herself forward and face it with grace and poise, with _dignity_ , just as Ristridin would have done, just as he would have told her to do too, sunlight-smiling and untouchable. She will honour him and she will honour her people, and she will hope, true or not, that she will find some small sliver of honour for herself as well.

It is all she can do. It is all she has the power to do.

And whether or not it is meaningful, whether or not it is enough, she will hold her head high, no matter the weight of the crown it holds, and she will do what she can.

What choice does she have?

—


End file.
